Moving In Closer.

This was what I meant to do last night but got carried away with the actual shape of the dried poppy seed case and its stem. I was grateful for all the comments and will attempt to give a reply about the steps used, when I can.

This isn't cropped, the magnification in this is the size it came out of the camera except for a little trimming of the aligned stack of 7 images. The diameter of the poppy is 10mm and has been magnified by a vintage 100mm lens on a set of bellows to increase the focal length.

I had a wee look at masks tonight after Xtine's advice yesterday but will need to study it a bit more and maybe delve into CS5 For Dummies.

What I did with editing in this was just a double dose of High Pass sharpening. I often work to get a bit of an arty look with flowers so I'm not worried that this isn't conveying the colours quite as the eye sees them. What always does bug me is that in focus stacking there are always little areas that have been missed out and show as blurred (those little wormy things).

EDIT: The Man looks at my blip and says "Ahh! What's that?"
Blinking heck! It's been on the table with the black cloth, the B&Q lamp and the camera on the tripod pointing at it for the last 2 hours!