I have been using Zerene stacker and have been quite happy with its features. However, I now have an awful lot of images on my hard drive which I'll likely never use or look at again. While I'm not as meticulous as some, I'm sure, I still do stacks of 20-40 images fairly often.
I'd like to know what others do with all the rest of the images used to make the stack.
Do you save them and if so, why?
Hi Eric,
I usually create TIFFs (sometimes JPEGs) that have had all Raw conversion optimizations (like CA removal, de-vignetting or light fall-off and light cast correction), dust removal (in C1 with LCCs), basic capture sharpening, etc, applied. Once I've achieved and retouched a successful stack, I'll throw the TIFF intermediaries away, but I do keep the Raws (with parametric corrections) because that allows me to recreate the intermediaries at will and with the latest Raw conversion engine capabilities.
I do understand your question, because deep (thin-slice) stacks do occupy a lot of storage space even in Raw format. And their volume rapidly grows. On the other hand, Storage is relatively affordable, so you could consider burning the source files for one or more stacks to DVDs (or swappable hard disks for larger quantities, in a docking station), just in case.
Does anyone find themselves going back and re-stacking very often?
Not often, but it does happen, e.g. when new Raw conversion engines become available, or new Stacking insights warrant a rerun.
Cheers,
Bart