Zerene Focus Stacking just won me over

Admittedly I have not made focus stacking a regular practice. However, the coming addition of a Cam Ranger inspired some practice work. So I bought the wife a bunch of flowers (brownie points) and then pointed the camera at them. Out of 12 stacked images (which consisted of 129 total captures) Photoshop CC was able to render 3 quite well while butchering the other 9. The 3 images Photoshop handled well were the ones with the least amount of focus stacking: anywhere up to 5 images. It also struggled with any sets I used a focus rail for. It seemed the alignment of the images was Photoshop's achilles heal in my tests.

After researching stacking softwares Zerene's name came up over and over and over again. With a 30 day trial and coffee in hand I have had it crunching away on the failed 9 stacks Photoshop couldn't handle for the past hour. So far, it has almost "nailed" 7 of the 9 failed stacks and left the other 2 in a state where they're easily fixable. On top of that it took me 1 hour-ish to do all the same work that took me close to 3 hours yesterday.

Yes, I realize Zerene is made for this niche and should function this well for focus stacking. I'm not knocking Photoshop because it can definitely handle things the same way, but it needs a lot of hand-holding to get there. My point is that I'm impressed with Zerene for this task and am adding the Pro version to my post processing arsenal.

Below are examples without any post processing work except alignment and stacking (PMax in Zerene's case).

Yellow flower #1 is from Photoshop
Yellow flower #2 is from Zerene

This is a 7 image stack where Photoshop struggled with the background borders and left a blurry spot on the bottom/middle of the flower. It definitely did a better job at handling artifacts around the peddles over Zerene. But those are easily fixed in Zerene.

Below are examples without any post processing work except alignment and stacking (PMax in Zerene's case). I intentionally DID NOT do any retouching work to compare images. Photoshop requires a lot of masking and layer checking to figure out where to let things through and what not. It is a big guessing game until you figure out which layer is best for what....I couldn't imagine doing that on more than 5 layers. In Zerene you just click the file you want to use on the left and paint it into your final image on the right.

Orange flower #1 is from Photoshop
Orange flower #2 is from Zerene

This is a 34 image stack. Photoshop butchered this one on a lot of levels that aren't easily apparent in this tiny JPEG. There are some glaring issues of blurry peddles in the main subject and odd border treatment. The Zerene version could use some selective painting outside of the subject area, but this image is ready to go back to Lightroom for final processing and cropping.

How much does the program cost? Does it work on MAC?

I'm on a 2010 Mac Pro with El Capitan and it works like a champ. I'll definitely put this on my old MacBook Pro Retina too. http://zerenesystems.c​om/cms/stacker

If you use Lightroom check this out so you know to install the plugin: http://zerenesystems.c​om …docs/workingwit​hlightroom

Their pricing is listed here: http://zerenesystems.c​om/cms/stacker/docs/pu​rchasing ...I like the features of the Prosumer version most, but they aren't "needed" for most.

Last weekend I was comparing CS6 to Helicon, no comparison, CS6 wasn't even in Helicon's ballpark.

I use Helicon Focus from HeliconSoft and it gives very good results.
Zerene Stacker didn't work for me.
I also use Combine ZP. It works very good but it's older program and you have to run it in Win XP mode.

You can also use enfuse, which is free. It is known more for exposure blending, but is excellent for extending depth of field. There are several GUIs available for it as well if you are not a command line person.

http://enblend.sourcef​orge.net/index.htm

Kirk

All good information to know, thanks!

Zerene works great for me too.

I'm not sure why Adobe even bothers putting their stacking, pano stitching, and hdr routines into Photoshop. I love Photoshop but those routines are crap compared to Zerene or Helicon (stacking), Autopano (stitching), and just about any other HDR application.

So far, that yellow flower I originally posted is the only stacking job Zerene didn't nail right out of the gate.

Just threw this one together:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/BQfx​Pu

Zerene is great, and it's Linux friendly, too.

I prefer Photoshop 2015 for my stacking needs, do a lot of it, and...I generally photomerge my images,
enabling me to cough out 30"-60" images @ 300 ppi.
I shoot tethered using Canon Utility Software in studio...it usually take 30-50 images of any one segment.
Granted that it does require a pretty hefty computer to accomplish the task...generally the stacking takes between 5-10 minutes.
There are far fewer artifacts after the last PS upgrade.

IMAGE LINK: http://s329.photobucke​t.com …ake%20two%20cop​y.jpg.html

chauncey wrote in post #17848305
I prefer Photoshop 2015 for my stacking needs, do a lot of it, and...I generally photomerge my images,
enabling me to cough out 30"-60" images @ 300 ppi.
I shoot tethered using Canon Utility Software in studio...it usually take 30-50 images of any one segment.
Granted that it does require a pretty hefty computer to accomplish the task...generally the stacking takes between 5-10 minutes.
There are far fewer artifacts after the last PS upgrade.

IMAGE LINK: http://s329.photobucke​t.com …ake%20two%20cop​y.jpg.html

Great results there chauncey! Good to see that someone can use PS stacking effectively. I tried the stack below in PS and then in Zerene. PS was an big fail (and I'm using the latest update) while Zerene did great. It just needed a minor touch where the background water meets the profile of the foreground rocks:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/CEDL​Yo