I have recently moved to Capture One 21 pro having acquired a fuji xt4 and am enjoying the end results of the edited Fuji RAW files, but, I do like taking photos of landscapes and should I choose to focus bracket I understand Capture One does not have the facility to blend a series of bracketed images and was wondering what other users do regarding this. Do you use the paid for plug-in that Capture One suggests, or do you batch edit in Capture One and then send to another application to stack?
I owned Helicon Focus before Helicon provided the C1 plugin, which, along with Zerene Stacker, is the program used by "specialist" focus stackers e.g in photomacrography and it works extremely well as a plugin with Capture One. But it's not something I do anymore.
I bypassed using Photoshop for focus stacking, because when I was interested in stacking everyone recommended using one of the above and to avoid photoshop. But as far as I am aware both Photoshop and Affinity Photo do a decent enough job for less challenging stacks, so may be good enough for many applications. The free CombineZP was also used by some people, and indeed some people were happy enough with Photoshop, even if most seem to have migrated to a specialist tool.
The only file management issue with C1 is getting the stacked file back from PS or AP back into C1, as it's easy to batch send the files from C1 into either of these programs. With Sessions this is relatively easy as you can just save from PS/AP back into the C1 capture folder and C1 automatically sees the stacked file. with a C1 catalogue you need to do the same but the catalogue might need re-synched before C1 can see it.
If you don't already have PS, I would give AP a try. Its currently on sale for half price (£24) and gives high quality pixel editing tools to do the things like focus stacking that C1 doesn't. So regardless of focus stacking, it's a great addition to C1 for providing all the pixel editing type tools that C1 doesn't have, and probably never will have, unless there is a complete change in policy.
As you learn C1 and watch more tutorials, you will quickly pick up the assumption from C1 staff that you will also have access to PS or AP, as they regularly suggest you using these programs for things that C1 can't do at all, or just doesn’t do very well, and that they have no aspirations of directly competing with pixel editors like PS or AP.
