ZERENE FOCUS STACKER COMPARED TO HELICON FOCUS ISO

ZERENE FOCUS STACKER COMPARED TO HELICON FOCUS ISO

The original images were ISO 200, f/9, with a 100mm macro lens. I thought this is a good example of why Lightroom and Zerene make a very powerful combination for focus stacking. It took just a couple of mouse clicks and a few seconds. I just selected the first image and synched all settings to the new image. As a result, the history was 29 steps long! You can return to any adjustment and adjust again. Because LR is a parametric editor, there is no harm in redoing any adjustments at any time.

Now I had the basic image I wanted, but I did not have the edits. Then I used Zerene's retouching tool to paint the entire background from the top-most image, to get it more blurred. So, I stacked again (I still had the TIFFs), dropping one or two from the back of the stack. I could only shave off one or two, so the stack would still have the background too much in focus. However, I looked at the images, and I found that I needed almost as many just to get the farthest point in the flower in focus. I wanted more blur outside the main flower. The detail outside of the main flower is distracting. You pick the image from the stack that is 'correct' for each area and paint from it to the composite. I used Zerene's retouching in a few spots where the stacked image had halos from parallax.

I wanted the entire open flower in focus, and I thought I should keep a few of the star-shaped unopened ones in focus too. I rarely need to use a pixel editor for these, but if I do, I move the image to photoshop.Ī few days ago, I created this image, which is a stack of 20 images. Stack in Zerene, retouch if needed (more on this below) export as 16-bit TIFFs, still in proPhoto RGBĥ. Examine at 100% to see which images in the set are needed to get the desired DOFĤ. I thought this example might be useful.ģ. There have been a number of threads recently in which people asked about focus stacking.

Zerene focus stacker compared to helicon focus