A simple trick for whenever you can’t hold focus – such as photographing miniatures.
Difference mattes can be great tools, but in the case of two images such as these:

 

 

Where some of the picture is in focus and some is out of focus, difference matting alone will not work, as all of the picture 1 has the opposite focus to picture 2. A simple difference matte would show almost everything is different.

 

 

 

 

Here is a simple trick (and the worse your situation, the better it works !)

In batch:

1. take image 1 and blur it more – try and blur the sharp section to the amount of the camera blurred section
2. Difference matte Picture 1 with the new extra blurred version

3. As the blur to unblur is more noticable than the already out of focused with blur, you should get a good matte easily.
4. take the output of this and do a simple action setup, foreground picture 1, for the matte channel use the difference matte and the background should be the opposite camera focus original picture 2.
5. Now in the Colour Corrector, adjust the curves or the histogram for a clean solution or an optical pull focus.

Submitter: Mike Seymour