How do I get rid of halos in focus stacking?

Retouch the halo area from a frame where the background is clean, or use a depth map style method, which adds less glow. Keeping the background further from the subject also helps.

Why does my focus stack have blurry stripes?

The focus steps were larger than each frame’s depth of field, leaving gaps no frame recorded sharply. Shoot again with smaller steps or a smaller aperture.

Can I fix movement in a focus stack?

Yes, if one frame shows the moved part cleanly: paint that area in from the single frame. Many stacking programs, including Detalia, have a brush for this.

Focus stacking problems: halos, soft bands, ghosting and how to fix them

All guides

Updated 2 November 2026 · 3 min read

Even a well-shot stack can show flaws at 100 %. Each kind has a recognisable look and a specific cause, which tells you whether to fix it now or shoot differently next time.

Halos and glow around edges

Look: a light or dark fringe around a sharp edge, often against a blurred background. Cause: in out-of-focus frames the edge is a wide blur. Some methods, especially pyramid methods, carry that blur or extra contrast into the result. Fix: retouch the fringe from a frame where the background is clean, or use software that keeps detail within what the camera recorded.

The blur of an out-of-focus edge spreads around the sharp one: a halo.

Soft bands across the subject

Look: a stripe of softness at a certain distance, like a contour line. Cause: a gap between two frames’ sharp zones. Fix: you can’t add detail that no frame recorded. Shoot again with a smaller step, see step size and aperture. Detalia reports such gaps and between which frames they fell.

Steps too large leave a band no frame recorded sharply.

See-through edges and smearing

Look: a near object, like a leg or a petal edge, looks partly transparent or smeared where it overlaps something further away. Cause: in the frames focused on the background, the near edge is a large, soft blur that covers the background detail. The stacking has to choose between the two, and the blur wins or mixes in. Fix: retouch from the frame where the near edge is sharp. Shoot with the background further away, or use a smaller aperture for fewer, deeper frames.

Doubled or ghosted detail

Look: a leg, antenna or blade of grass appears twice, or has a faint copy beside it. Cause: it moved between frames. Fix: paint the area in from one frame. Next time, shoot faster, wait for the wind to drop, or work when insects are cool and still.

Painting a moved leg in from a single frame removes the ghost copies.

Blurry or cropped corners

Look: soft or smeared strips along the edges. Cause: focus breathing changes the image size between frames, so after alignment some frames don’t reach the corners. Fix: crop slightly. Leave room around the subject when shooting, or use a focusing rail for macro.

Frames shift, tilt and change size slightly. Alignment brings them together before stacking.

Stripes of brightness

Look: patches or bands that are slightly lighter or darker. Cause: exposure varied between frames: flickering LED or mains lighting, a flash that didn’t fully recharge, or the lens’s brightness changing with focus distance. Fix: software that evens out brightness between frames handles small differences. Otherwise use manual exposure, flicker-free light, and a longer interval with flash.

Repeated dust spots

Sensor dust stays put on the sensor, but alignment moves each frame differently, so one spot can turn into a trail of spots in the result. Clean the sensor before a long stack, or remove the spots from the finished image.

Questions

How do I get rid of halos in focus stacking?: Retouch the halo area from a frame where the background is clean, or use a depth map style method, which adds less glow. Keeping the background further from the subject also helps.
Why does my focus stack have blurry stripes?: The focus steps were larger than each frame’s depth of field, leaving gaps no frame recorded sharply. Shoot again with smaller steps or a smaller aperture.
Can I fix movement in a focus stack?: Yes, if one frame shows the moved part cleanly: paint that area in from the single frame. Many stacking programs, including Detalia, have a brush for this.