Originally Posted by Rob Pauza Nice job Michael. Do you prefer Zerene or Photoshop for the stacking? I have both a PC and Mac, but I do all my photo stuff on the Mac, so I guess I don't have the Zenene option.... without some pain going cross-platform that is.

Zerene stacker does have a MAC os version.
Brian V.

Originally Posted by Rob Pauza Nice job Michael. Do you prefer Zerene or Photoshop for the stacking? I have both a PC and Mac, but I do all my photo stuff on the Mac, so I guess I don't have the Zenene option.... without some pain going cross-platform that is.

I haven't tried in Photoshop, as I try to become proficient in software that I can actually afford .

Great tutorial, Brian, thank you. I've had moderate success with this, but I still have some issues.

This is a winner at f/5.6 with 3 exposures.


#1

The second also works (less than 1:1) at f/2.8 with 3 exposures.


#2


The last one is at f/2.8 with 5 exposures. Can anyone explain the problem?


#3

Any input would be appreciated.

JOhn - as you say the first 2 stacks look good, the last one is a bit of a mess.
Not really certain what causes this but looks like one of the images has been mis-scaled or aligned. Have you tried reversing the stack order and trying it ?
Brian v.

Originally Posted by GOLDENORFE WHY ARE YOUR FILE SIZES SO BIG? what camera are u using? my stacked files from zerene average 7-9 mb

Sorry I never saw your question till now...

I use a 5D Mark II and I generally stop down to F/10 so there is a lot more detail to record than using an open F/#

Just replaced my D90 w/ my D7000... First thing I wanted to mess with were some macros and focus stacking. Testing out HeliconFocus for now, but I hope to a cheaper alternative for mac before the trial is up. I was testing it on one of my watches. Pictures are of the movement inside a recent acquisition of mine.

First shot


Took 9 in total

Scott- that stack came out very well !
Brian v.

Happy to report that tests with PS CS5.1 went really well. I used 15 captures from 5D2, each about 5mm DOF for this 75mm silver gecko :) From tip of snout to end result:


My i7 CPU was rather busy with the job and the resulting TIFF was 3.42 GByte big !

Looks great Nick - Any chance that you can piont me to a tutorial on CS5 and stacking?

Originally Posted by cbbr Looks great Nick - Any chance that you can piont me to a tutorial on CS5 and stacking?

Oh that's easy enough nowadays... anything you want to know, just google it and if you like to see it, include keyword "youtube" in your google search

Brian, when using Zerene stacker, must I first manually save each of the RAW slices to a TIF? It doesn't seem to want to accept my RAW CR2 files. Thanks in advance.

Originally Posted by b.d.bop Brian, when using Zerene stacker, must I first manually save each of the RAW slices to a TIF? It doesn't seem to want to accept my RAW CR2 files. Thanks in advance.

Hi, Yes- afraid so , it does not accept RAW files. I only ever stack JPGs
Brian v.

Originally Posted by Lord Vetinari Hi, Yes- afraid so , it does not accept RAW files. I only ever stack JPGs Brian v.

Thanks, Brian. Do you use some sort of bulk action in Ps to convert all your RAW slices to JPEGs, or do each one manually?

Originally Posted by b.d.bop Thanks, Brian. Do you use some sort of bulk action in Ps to convert all your RAW slices to JPEGs, or do each one manually?

I Just use Canons DPP RAW converter and do exposure control, colour temperature correction at the same time - yes it handles bulk files but I do not use TIFF files, they just take up too much space for the number of photographs I take..
Brian v.

Thanks, as always, Brian.

- Mark