CS 5 and Focus Stacking

[hubell]

One feature in CS4 that was very poorly executed was the focus stacking for combining multiple images with different focus points so as to extend the depth of field. None of the summaries of the new and improved features in CS5 has mentioned any work having been done on this feature, which, if true, is really unfortunate. Achieving extended depth of field is probably the most difficult technical challenge I face. Too bad more time was not spent on this instead of the Puppet Warp tool. You have to wonder who advises Adobe on what photographers really need.

[BernardLanguillier]

One feature in CS4 that was very poorly executed was the focus stacking for combining multiple images with different focus points so as to extend the depth of field. None of the summaries of the new and improved features in CS5 have mentioned any work having been done on this feature, which, if true, is really unfortunate. Achieving extended depth of field is probably the most difficult technical challenge I face. Too bad more time was not spent on this instead of the Puppet Warp tool. You have to wonder who advises Adobe on what photographers really need.

There are very good third party software to handle DoF stacking and panoramic stitching, this could be the reason?

Cheers,
Bernard

[DarkPenguin]

There are very good third party software to handle DoF stacking and panoramic stitching, this could be the reason?

Cheers,
Bernard

That doesn't make sense.  Adobe is trying to sell you adobe software.  Getting improvements in things like focus stacking and photo merges got me to update photoshop last time.

I'm expecting DoF stacking improvements just by going 64 bit and upping my PC's memory.

[graeme]

Too bad more time was not spent on this instead of the Puppet Warp tool. You have to wonder who advises Adobe on what photographers really need.

We should probably remember that photoshop has never been aimed solely at photographers.

[Tim Gray]

Assuming they got it right this time, it took a couple of releases to get HDR up to where it's competitive with Photomatix.  I expect that eventually they'll bring the focus stack up to par with Helicon or CombineZ.

I'm pretty sure that part of their development model includes a scan of what third party apps are doing well and then (very) gradually incorporate that functionality.

[bill t.]

Well the focus stacking improved a lot between CS3 and CS4, so I would hope for additional improvements for CS5.

But honestly, the best option is to spend $55 for Helicon Focus Pro.  It gives you quick & easy control over halos, and has a great rubber stamp tool that makes it easy to fix ambiguous artifacts such as the inevitable moving branches against the sky.  Very well thought out user interface.  You can even send your processed images directly to Helicon Pro from within Lightroom.  Full 16 bit, color managed path throughout.  CS4 stacking can't touch it from a quality point of view, the CS4 masked edges are pretty gross compared to what you can get with Helicon.

If you only want to spend $0, CombineZP is pretty nice too, but it's only 8bits and it reduces your images to sRGB.

[Nigel Johnson]

...But honestly, the best option is to spend $55 for Helicon Focus Pro...

Bill,

From your post it looked as though Helicon Focus Pro had got much more affordable than when I last investigated it as an option. I therefore checked the Helicon website and you appear to have quoted the price for a one year licence, where the software reverts back to demo mode after one year. The full time-unlimited version is $200 making Helicon Focus Pro a much more expensive product making it less suitable unless one is doing many focus stacks..

Regards
Nigel

[bill t.]

From your post it looked as though Helicon Focus Pro had got much more affordable than when I last investigated it as an option. I therefore checked the Helicon website and you appear to have quoted the price for a one year licence, where the software reverts back to demo mode after one year. The full time-unlimited version is $200 making Helicon Focus Pro a much more expensive product making it less suitable unless one is doing many focus stacks..

Yes I somewhat misrepresented cost.  But I do a lot of focus stacking, and to me it's worth it simply for the tight integration between Lightroom and Helicon.  For $1.06/week, it's a must-have for a heavy stack user.

For a 7 panel panorama I would typically generate around 42, 120mb tifs in preparation for the stacking step, and well over 100 if I was also exposure blending.  That's at least 5gb of intermediate files for a single pano just hanging around on the disc for no other reason than a one time use.  With Helicon as a Lightroom export option, there is no need to generate those intermediate files and sweep them up later.  It saves a significant amount of PP and/or brain time, something like 15 minutes per pano.  Plus I just love-to-death the retouch tool for those crazy moving-tree and cloud artifacts which require lots of Photoshop rubber stamping with other good options like the free CombineZP batch processor.