Abstract: A method and apparatus for generating a surface image of a target. The laser beam of a confocal laser microscope is moved along a scanning pattern on an area of a target. During each scanning pattern, the resulting electronic focus signal of the microscope is sampled at defined positions along the scanning pattern to generate a frame of pixel intensity values. At the end of each scanning pattern, the height of the target is slightly increased. A new frame of pixel intensity values is generated for each height of the target. The pixel intensity values of the frames are compared. The maximum pixel intensity value for each defined position along the scanning pattern is stored to create a single frame representative of the surface image of the target. In an alternate embodiment, the height at which each maximum pixel intensity value was measured is stored in a separate memory.