Stacking software ????

Not sure if this is the right forum or not but my question is what stacking software would be a good choice for macro and other normal pictures.

I've just downloaded the 30 day trial for zerene and given it a go, seems to work pretty well

Thanks will see what else is out there.

lonerider519 wrote in post #16667375
Thanks will see what else is out there.

I use Zerene as well. It was the best I found.

I use Zerene. There is also Helicon Focus. Both cost around the same. Combine ZP is a free windows program. Not sure if it results in the same level of images as the other two.

Helicon and Zerene both work well, and both have advantages and drawbacks.

In my experience Zerene is quite a bit better at aligning shots that were hand-held and therefore not well aligned. Helicon tends to show ghosting in shots like that.

Some images, especially those with strongly out-of-focus parts in the foreground, tend to give conspicuous halos. In some of my trials, Helicon did quite a bit better than Zerene did. But in other tests, it was the other way around. So on this point I am undecided as to which is best.

What is certain is that in some stacks, you get ghosting or halos that are hard to avoid. You will get very different results depending on the program and the selected methods/options. Some results are just unacceptable. You can retouch some of the ghosting to fix them up at least partially, but that is time-consuming.

You can download free time-limited trials of Helicon and Zerene. Unfortunately Helicon plasters your results with unsightly Helicon text and this makes it difficult to evaluate the program. Zerene gives clean results that are fully usable.

Besides Helicon and Zerene, CombineZ (CombineZP) and Photoshop can also do focus stacking. I have no experience with either.