![]() ![]() For a substack in Helicon focus, tick the frames that you want to make a substack of, but you also must add the first frame of your aligned full stack sequence. Helicon Focus does not have the same substacking utilities that Zerene Stacker does, but with a workaround you can achieve a form of substacks. Then the slabs can be retouched into the final stack on top of each other rather than merging with fake transparency. With overlapping details it helps if the front detail can be fully rendered in one slab just on its own, with back detail in an entirely different slab. Slabbing certainly makes retouching easier. That said there's no iron rule about what you should slab, in the sense that for some subjects a pmax stack of dmap segments works best, whereas for others a dmap stack of pmax segments works best. So to get the best of both, make a main stack using Dmap but touch in partial Pmax substacks for the outlines and where overlapping hairs cause issues. The Zerene Stacker DMap mode is much more about detail and doesn't accumulate as many extras, but it just doesn't always do outlines very well. On top of this, whilst the Zerene Stacker PMax mode is an excellent algorithm for outlines, it also accumulates noise, alters colours and contrast, effects which only increase as the stack is deeper. And the more images you stack, the more the final stack is influenced by the sum of each separate out of focus area during the stack. When processing images in stacking software, the contrast and brightness of the stacked result is based on what went in and the details are merged. Most of the solution to focus stacking problems with hairs is slabbing, or substacks: making mini stacks of specific parts of your stack and combining these rather than combining just a single large stack of everything. But opinion and experience varies so this should be something that you experiment with. Logic might tend to dictate that you'd minimise noise by overlapping less, but at the time of writing 25-50% seems to be the accepted amount. There is work to be done in this area as there is no generally accepted amount of overlap between adjacent slabs for the cleanest results. ![]() This causes an out of focus light level fogginess that detracts from both the accuracy and the aesthetic look of the final stack. On top of that, if you have an out of focus background or foreground object, then this can show on the final stack and affect the clarity with which you see the slice that's being shot. This is very common in stacking and can lead to a bristly semi transparent mess with, for example, insect hairs. Whilst focus stacking on its own solves the macro depth of field problem, it also brings other challenges in its wake, which are by and large unavoidable because of the nature of stacks themselves.īy combining layers, which is what stacking is, one layer maybe semi-transparent and show another layer behind. The hairs on this bumblebee queen would have been a nightmare without using slabbing to separate them out. Slabbing seemed such an obvious benefit that I adopted it very early on in my workflow, and it has helped a lot in gaining encouraging stacking results. The sheer existence of these utilities alone sets Zerene Stacker above its competitor, Helicon Focus.Ī slabbed focus stack with Zerene Stacker. Use ZereneVS, Slabberjockey, BugSlabber or MakeSubStackingScript ( Windows | Mac ) to generate your substacks. These utilities take some time to understand but what they do is write the Zerene Stacker batch job that will create the slabs for you. Manual slabbing is a time consuming and fiddly addition to the standard stack but there are some great utilities to speed up the process for you. It is not a technique that is normally neccessary but if the result is poor then it may helf distinctify hairs in front of each other so as to make the final stack more accurate. Slabbing is a useful tool when used in conjunction with retouching, but by itself it is not a panacea for poor technique or other issues. Substack slabbing is the recognised technique to solve some of the most common challenges that come with focus stacking macro images. ![]()
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