Image Stacking Questions

Morning all,

Something popped up in my addled old curious brain this morning.

If I were to take lots of images, with the focal point on different parts all over the scene in order to get full clarity all over the image, then, in my case, i'd run them through Lightroom as a 'photo merge' a HDR or Panorama, how does the program know, in all of the images being merged, that it's the sharpest point of each image I need 'used'.

To explain further and hopefully to make more sense, If I took 2 images, once with a focus on a near object, and one with a focus on something in the distance, when merged, why would the software decide that I wanted to use those 2 focal points for the best image and if I merged the 2, which I assume is some sort of overlaying, if the image with the further focal point overlays the other, would that then look at my front feature, look at the 2 images and take some sort of average?

How does it know what i'm trying to achieve?

Hope this makes sense

Thanks all

My guess is that once you have the images aligned, the program looks for steep tonal gradients and favors those bits over ones with more gradual tonal gradients. Maybe what I'm describing is high contrast vs. low. The actual algorithm is probably proprietary.

I use Capture One Pro for raw processing now. One feature it does not have is focus stacking. I'm looking forward to trying out Helicon Focus. It is a third party plugin for Capture One Pro. Anyone have any experience with it?

Others will probably chime in as well, but Lightroom does not do focus stacking. The merge to HDR handles various tonal variations, light and dark, things like that. The merge to Panorama stitches various images to achieve a pano.

Photoshop does do focus stacking but it isn't always good straight out, sometimes additional adjustments are needed on the various layers you end up with.

Ditto to Ken's comments.

Helicon is popular but I've never used it. You can purchase the "basic" license for about $115 (lifetime, no subscription). There are other options including a 1-year only for less money.

The other option is Photoshop, which has a focus stacking feature built-in. I've used it with mixed results. I have it through the photography bundle at $10/month, part of Adobe's infamous subscription plan. But you can't do this in Lightroom.

dasmith232 wrote in post #19068804
Ditto to Ken's comments.

Helicon is popular but I've never used it. You can purchase the "basic" license for about $115 (lifetime, no subscription). There are other options including a 1-year only for less money.

The other option is Photoshop, which has a focus stacking feature built-in. I've used it with mixed results. I have it through the photography bundle at $10/month, part of Adobe's infamous subscription plan. But you can't do this in Lightroom.

I've used PS's stacking with mixed results as well, but very useable. Just needed to manually blend in an area or 2, not a hard job, and the results were very good.

Evening all, thanks very much for your replies.

To be honest, I didn't know what to expect after I posted the thread but it's very interesting to read the replies.

I'm a little deflated that my Lightroom merging is not going to do the job (I think that's what folks are saying, aren't they?)

Maybe the only way is to use a specific stacking program but I cannot condone the cost of the Helicon program right now, that's a lot of money for something not to be used frequently enough.

Are there any other programs out there, either free or a lot cheaper, that would work?

tuttifrutti wrote in post #19068965
Evening all, thanks very much for your replies.
....

Are there any other programs out there, either free or a lot cheaper, that would work?

Try emblend/enfuse. It is run from the command line but you can probably find a free GUI front end for it.

http://enblend.sourcef​orge.net/

GUI example:

http://software.bergma​rk.com/enfuseGUI/Main.​html

Tutorial:

https://patdavid.net …-macro-photos-enfuse.html

Good luck. It is not as difficult as it might look at first.

Kirk

Thanks Kirk - i'll have a look at it and see how I go

Here's a free stacking program I use. CombineZM
https://combinezm.en.l​o4d.com/windows

And a little tutorial on using it

https://www.photoartfr​omscience.com …-stacking-with-combine-zm


In the first link, go to the bottom where it says Download CombineZM 1.0.0 for Windows for the right download button

Thanks very much Walt. I'll be having a look at that

CS does a pretty good job.
This is imperfect but still good. A little bit of work and it could be great. Handheld shots, alignment was needed, probably better result if better aligned to start with.

That looks like a decent effort Dave.

Unfortunately for me, I don't want to go down the CS subscription route for now

Neither do I (want subscription). I have CS4.

Choderboy wrote in post #19069288
Neither do I (want subscription). I have CS4.

Hang on to that for dear life

Affinity Photo is on sale for $25. It will do focus stacking, although I have not tried it. For me, it does a better job doing HDR and panoramas than when I used Lightroom 6 for those. I often use it for stacking and exposure merging and am happy with those results.