Focus stacking and software

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Photo_Slug

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Andrew
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I’m about to learn and implement focus stacking for some product photography. I use photoshop elements at the moment but the version I have doesn’t do focus stacking. Helicon looks to be quite cost effective but is it any good? What you all use for processing your focus stacking ? Also any tips help etc will be very gratefully received.

Thanks : )
 
Helicon is excellent for automated stacking but if you're doing it manually then Alan Hadley's Combine ZP (free) is a very capable option.
 
I tried FS for the first time this week and as I already have Photoshop I used that.
Worked fine.
 
Photo_Slug said:
Manual focus stacking would be fine but how hard is it to do it ?
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The automated or manual stacking was a reference to whether you'd be advancing the camera yourself or using a motorised rail. The software doesn't care which method was used.
 
Here's a stack I just did in Affinity (this is the first one i've done so take what yiou will from that). It was 4 images focussing from front to back in turn. I think it's come out quite well considering it;s the first time i've tried it and the software seems to handle the stacking pretty well. This is SOOC apart from the stack process.

stack.jpg
 
I just got Affinity also at the cut price purely for focus/exposure stacking as Capture One doesnt do this. It works really well as a side editor to Capture One and I can also add a frame and border simply as a well. Stacking seems to work well and very simple to do. did find I need to potentially take more images than you think but as the test was wide open and close to the lens probably only need to worry about this with Macro shots than landscapes
 
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Oh I’ve recently bought affinity but haven’t taken many photos recently to try it out
Thanks for the heads up about being able to focus stack up to now I’ve been doing it manually in photoshop, but I normally only do a stack of about three shots just to get a bit more depth of field
 
LCPete said:
Oh I’ve recently bought affinity but haven’t taken many photos recently to try it out
Thanks for the heads up about being able to focus stack up to now I’ve been doing it manually in photoshop, but I normally only do a stack of about three shots just to get a bit more depth of field
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If you go to File>New Focus Merge, you'll be gievn a dialogue box where you can add the files, then you just click the OK button and it does it.
 
FlyPhot said:
If you go to File>New Focus Merge, you'll be gievn a dialogue box where you can add the files, then you just click the OK button and it does it.
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Thanks that’s brilliant
I’ll give it a try it takes me a while to learn new software, I’m not the quickest learner!
 
I’m the same with software, if it’s not really intuitive I tend to loose interest using it as learning it takes so long .
 
LCPete said:
Thanks that’s brilliant
I’ll give it a try it takes me a while to learn new software, I’m not the quickest learner!
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It is really simple. I think i'm going to stack in Affinity, and then PP in Capture One as a workflow.
 
There is plenty of Youtube videos on Affinity Photo. Anthony Morganti has a whole set - Intro to advance processing
 
AgentOrange76 said:
There is plenty of Youtube videos on Affinity Photo. Anthony Morganti has a whole set - Intro to advance processing
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Thanks yes I had a look at a video on affinity and had a go with a raw image that I took a while ago very pleased with the result :):)
It works in a slightly different way to photoshop the next thing I’ve got to practice on and experiment is sharpening
I haven’t found any recommended starting point settings yet for affinity but I’ll have a look later
I used to use smart sharpen in photoshop but quite a low amount as I presharpened a bit on raw conversion in lightroom
 
Yep beat me to it ,focus stacking with Olympus is a total doddle dial in your required settings and it churns out a virtually finished photo in seconds
 
stryvya said:
Or you could buy an Olympus Camera that does it in Camera!!
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They don't all stack in camera, most just focus bracket and you have to stack in an external program.
Doing it in camera is fine if you only want a jpg.
 
Focus Stacking I have found is a pleasant enough way to idle away the odd half hour or so.
Affinity Photo not so much, downloaded the trial version, but won't be purchasing it
 
Well I'm sold (y) ( affinity)
I thought I'd play with a couple of recent images, just a quick dirty edit, but if it'll do this with just 2 ....

before ( clickable attachments )

1.jpg 2.jpg
After ( obviously some processing on this )
Merged-small.jpg
 
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Very impressed with ‘affinity’ the demonstration by Cobra of what’s possible with just two images is really impressive. I’m sold too!
 
I'll add a (y) for affinity too.
20 something images processed in PS and Affinity.
PS left a nasty halo around the subject, and trying to work through the masks to get rid of it felt impossible.
Affinity was far better out of the box, and the little bits that did need work were easily dealt with in a far more intuitive way.

Photoshop Version (I had three or four attempts)

TP 52 for 2020 : Week 14 - Time by Tim White, on Flickr

Affinity Version (First attempt)

TP 52 for 2020 : Week 14 - Time by Tim White, on Flickr

And no, I don't work for Serif. I think I will be ponying up for it though.
 
Much different. I think Affinity is the way to go ! PS didn’t do a very good job in my opinion. I have loads of products to photograph so don’t really want a huge amount of work correcting halos etc. Tim’s example really highlights the differences between the two bits of software.
 
Photo_Slug said:
Much different. I think Affinity is the way to go ! PS didn’t do a very good job in my opinion. I have loads of products to photograph so don’t really want a huge amount of work correcting halos etc. Tim’s example really highlights the differences between the two bits of software.
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I also have On1, which is advertised as having "Focus Stacking" but the example I tried finished up with a lot of artifacts.
Tried it in Affinity and the result was perfect!
I raised the issue on the On1 forum but so far (afte three days) there has been no response.
 
I have ON1 also and had given up with Focus/Exposure stacking, its combersome and it never worked well enough. None of the output ever looked good enough that I would chose to use it over a single image.

Tried Affinity and straight away had usable images. The 3 experimental images needed 2 more images to provide detail between the 3 images i needed but that was a learning from my point to take more than I need although from a Landscape point of view 3 should be fine. Macro or close to the lens will need more.
 
I got my extension tubes yesterday so had a little go in the garden this morning, here is the result of a 5 image stack in Affinity (this is my first real go at macro, be gentle)

I would also add that the Inpainting Brush (spot removal tool) in Affinity is absolutely superb at removing blemishes/small objects from an image, it seems to be incredibly intelligent.

 
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FlyPhot said:
it seems to be incredibly intelligent.
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My thought too, far superior to CS5.
Which I tried a few years back, it was an epic fail, TBH so I gave up.
However this was 25 quid well spent ( I used the the trial and couldn't resist it at that price)
 
To be honest that's more close up than macro, but the stacking worked well...now get in closer [emoji106]
 
supergeeman said:
To be honest that's more close up than macro, but the stacking worked well...now get in closer [emoji106]
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That was a close as I could get, and get focus. The flower is about the size of a 20p.so its pretty close hahs
 
OK Chaps (and Ladies), a simple numpty question from one who is interested, but not yet tried it.
Is it a case of setting the Aperture and the focus, and move the camera rearwards from the front focal point without adjusting the focus?
 
FlyPhot said:
I got my extension tubes yesterday so had a little go in the garden this morning, here is the result of a 5 image stack in Affinity (this is my first real go at macro, be gentle)

I would also add that the Inpainting Brush (spot removal tool) in Affinity is absolutely superb at removing blemishes/small objects from an image, it seems to be incredibly intelligent.

Click to expand...

If you use a larger aperture for your stacked images, it has the advantage of throwing the background more out of focus.
However you might need to use more images in the stack because of the shallower DOF.

+1 for the Affinity "Inpainting Brush."
 
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I normally use PS for photostacking & pano and for the most part I had good results but, for me, their HDR failed miserably. I just put all failures down to me.

Once I started using LR I found I had less failures with stacking & pano & good results in HDR with images PS did poorly with.

Have tried the free Affinity and it did a good job with images that PS failed on. I need to do a few more tests with all three to compare the fine detail to see which I believe is best but I must admit the the only reason I'm sticking with PS for now is I can't figure out 'content aware fill', 'masking, blending etc' 'Cloaning', 'spot removal' and a few other things in Affinity.

I have to admit after sticking with the LS learning curve (as advised by members on here) post processing is far easier than in PS and LS only starts to loose to PS when image manipulation is needed. Now if I can only figure that lot in Affinity.
 
reheat module said:
OK Chaps (and Ladies), a simple numpty question from one who is interested, but not yet tried it.
Is it a case of setting the Aperture and the focus, and move the camera rearwards from the front focal point without adjusting the focus?
Click to expand...

That is one way, the other is to fix the camera in one position and manually adjust the focus which is mostly what I do. My new camera can be set up to take a number of images adjusting the focus between each shot. The number of shots & distance the focus is adjusted is set by the user.
 
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Dangerous said:
That is one way, the other is to fix the camera in one position and manually adjust the focus which is mostly what I do. My new camera can be set up to take a number of images adjusting the focus between each shot. The number of shots & distance the focus is adjusted is set by the user.
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This method will induce some distortion when using almost all modern macro lenses as the magnification will change as a function of the distance from the plane of sharp focus to the sensor plane
 
Canon Bob said:
This method will induce some distortion when using almost all modern macro lenses as the magnification will change as a function of the distance from the plane of sharp focus to the sensor plane
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Didn't know that.

So why do Canon add focus stacking in camera to do that?
 
Dangerous said:
Didn't know that.

So why do Canon add focus stacking in camera to do that?
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It's a feature that works but produces a less than accurate result. HDR is an in-camera feature but the result doesn't neccessarily represent reality.
 
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