Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: phoTOMgraphy on February 03, 2009, 08:57:50 am

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: phoTOMgraphy on February 03, 2009, 08:57:50 am

hi,
i'm thinking of trying image stacks for more DoF. but don't know how to do it practically.

what is your workflow like? how to find the right amount of images for a given lens and aperture?

which software (helicon focus / CS4 ...)?

how to begin with that new land of experience?

cheers
tom

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: Jack Flesher on February 03, 2009, 10:55:44 am

Quote from: phoTOMgraphy

hi,
i'm thinking of trying image stacks for more DoF. but don't know how to do it practically.

what is your workflow like? how to find the right amount of images for a given lens and aperture?

which software (helicon focus / CS4 ...)?

how to begin with that new land of experience?

cheers
tom

Save yourself a bunch of grief, get the just released Helicon Focus 4.  Automatic and fast AND editable.  Oh, and it is multi-core enabled and flies on my Mac, and there is also a Win 64 version that I can only assume smokes. IMO it's worth owning the full version: http://www.heliconsoft.com/purchase.html (http://www.heliconsoft.com/purchase.html)  

Watch for a future tutorial on how to use the new editing brushes and masks that I suspect will be featured here on LL pretty soon .  In the meantime here is some introductory discussion and initial sample images from version 4: http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5306 (http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5306)

Cheers,

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: MichaelEzra on February 03, 2009, 11:04:03 am

I wonder how does the 3D feature of Helicon Focus works?

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: ynp on February 03, 2009, 11:18:15 am

Quote from: Jack Flesher

Watch for a future tutorial on how to use the new editing brushes and masks that I suspect will be featured here on LL pretty soon .  In the meantime here is some introductory discussion and initial sample images from version 4: http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5306 (http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5306)

Cheers,

Jack,

Thank you for the update!
I am looking forward to seeing the Tutorial soon.

Yevgeny

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: hubell on February 03, 2009, 11:32:51 am

Quote from: Jack Flesher

Save yourself a bunch of grief, get the just released Helicon Focus 4.  Automatic and fast AND editable.  Oh, and it is multi-core enabled and flies on my Mac, and there is also a Win 64 version that I can only assume smokes. IMO it's worth owning the full version: http://www.heliconsoft.com/purchase.html (http://www.heliconsoft.com/purchase.html)  

Watch for a future tutorial on how to use the new editing brushes and masks that I suspect will be featured here on LL pretty soon .  In the meantime here is some introductory discussion and initial sample images from version 4: http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5306 (http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5306)

Cheers,

The Lite version I have works very well, but does not return a 16 bit file with masked layers. It is a flattened 16 bit file. does the newer version for the Mac do layered files?

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: Jack Flesher on February 03, 2009, 02:29:24 pm

Quote from: hcubell

The Lite version I have works very well, but does not return a 16 bit file with masked layers. It is a flattened 16 bit file. does the newer version for the Mac do layered files?

I don't want to spoil the tutorial, but the simple answer is no... But you don't need it to anyway since it's fully editable in Helicon before you export it.  In the current full version you can export a variety of file types, including jpegs and 16-bit tiffs.

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: Terence h on February 04, 2009, 08:28:09 am

Hello just downloaded Helicon 4 for mac yesterday and is working great , it did battle with some herbs that i had in the shot ,but it was a pretty
easy job to choose the correct image and correct by cloning. (was using it to extend the focus with close up food photography)

I might just get the $70 years license because things change so rapidly with software.

Regards
Terence

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on February 04, 2009, 10:30:27 am

I see this can be done in CS4 as well. Have not tried it myself but wonder why it has not come up in this thread yet. Is it clunky in CS4 perhaps?

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: Jack Flesher on February 04, 2009, 10:41:58 am

Quote from: Martin Kristiansen

I see this can be done in CS4 as well. Have not tried it myself but wonder why it has not come up in this thread yet. Is it clunky in CS4 perhaps?

I suggest you try both just to see how much more elegant the HF 4 solution is...

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: Luis Argerich on February 04, 2009, 10:43:53 am

Hi, my first post here

If you want to check a free / open source alternative you can try CombineZM
http://hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZM/News.htm (http://hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZM/News.htm)
It was discussed in this forum here:
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....showtopic=31262 (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=31262)

I'm interested in feedback about CombineZM for landscapes

Luigi

Title: stacking for DoF
Post by: E_Edwards on February 05, 2009, 01:40:19 pm

Today I upgraded to the latest version of Helicon Focus for Mac and I have to say, it has been greatly improved, it really seems a lot better, quicker and has a very nice before/after retouching module that makes it so much better than before. I only use it for depth of focus layers though.  The life time upgrade cost me $100, worth every penny for me.

Edward