Basic focus Stacking Techniques with Helicon Focus | Tip & Tricks

[@BMadPhoto]

That grouping tip alone in lightroom is gold, thanks, that will save so much time (I always forget to do the blank shot between sets, now I don't have to worry about it!) - Happy shooting :)

[@StewartWoodArt]

It is a great tool for organising your images.

[@thomasriera2030]

Nice, clear, video. Thank you for sharing your workflow! Stacking the outputs was interesting. Helicon Focus is so great at handling large stacks. I tend to use the HF retouching to clean up backgrounds. You have a simple solid color for your example but, I'll often have out of focus plant bits that are more multi-colored and soft bokeh blobs. Through the focus stack those soft blobs can become less soft between the 1st and last frames. Once stacked, they can have harder or weirder edges in the final output. That's where I'll grab the 1st shot in the stack (with the softest background) and use the retouching tool to paint that background into my output.

[@StewartWoodArt]

I have done that quite often my self.

[@samelogio7441]

Thank you for this. You have provided the best workflow overview that I have seen on stacking with Helicon Focus. I will be incorporating this into my workflow.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you, glad it was helpful.

[@samelogio7441]

@@StewartWoodArt So helpful that I am watching it again.

[@StewartWoodArt]

@samelogio7441 awesome!

[@tuftyhill]

Hi Stewart what a fantastic video tutorial. I was struggling with stacking my first bracketed images (from yesterday) earlier and as they were handheld there was some movement. Helicon Focus couldn't stack the images and it produced what looked like a monster 😂 I had seen you could adjust the settings in the Edit - Auto Adjustment tab but didn't have a clue what settings to use (I do now) Also I never thought about rendering using all 3 methods and then stacking a couple of those!! Brilliant. Thanks for this very helpful video

[@StewartWoodArt]

Your welcome.

[@malaustwick5364]

Thank you Stewart. I'll shall be watching out for the future video's for sure 👍

[@StewartWoodArt]

Awesome

[@hanswi336]

I'm gonna watch this again and again till the day I can follow your English 🙂 and it helps the YT alghorithm

[@StewartWoodArt]

Lmao, I do need to start speaking proper English. the only language I know is bad English lol

[@hanswi336]

@@StewartWoodArt 🙂🙂🙂

[@Trish12303]

Thank you Stewart, that was very helpful!!

[@StewartWoodArt]

Very welcome

[@williamhirsh9625]

Wow I am so impressed with you teaching it comes in layman's terms I have enjoyed and look forward to more to come.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you.

[@TraceyBlackmore-k6y]

Another great video! Thank you for sharing

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you.

[@nevertwenty]

putting that olympus to work boy!! beautiful shot.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you.

[@mymagicmurals]

Absolutely mesmerising to watch and I also learned a couple of features in LR and PS I didn't know were there. The grouping tip is so helpful. Thank you for this video.

[@brynscott2997]

Thanks Stewart, I have just started using Helicon Focus and this has been a great help.

[@stephenstevenson1900]

Very informative video Stewart.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you.

[@normansavigar]

Thanks for this video describing your workflow in more detail. I've followed you for a while and been doing some stacking work with both Topaz Photo AI and Helicon from LrC. I've decided to move across to Lr (desktop) in the last couple of weeks so seeing this video has given me some thoughts on an adjusted workflow that doesn't rely upon the options within LrC. I can get the files on my Local drive into Topaz via Photoshop from Lr but I have to load the files into Helicon directly from my Local drive for stacking. It's a bit more cumbersome but I'm now going to try your AB + C method to see if I can get it to work through Lr from the Local Drive. I look forward to the full implementation of Plug-ins in Lr as raised with Katrin on Sunday ...

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you for watching.

[@mrwates]

Very well explained :) beautiful images

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you my friend.

[@jeffdavis7912]

Thank you for sharing. This will help me a lot.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you for watching.

[@jhmnieuwenhuis]

Superb video, learned a lot already. Thanks !!

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you.

[@briankennerley5833]

Thanks Stewart very informative 👍🏻

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you

[@marktaylor9579]

Really great video Stewart - now subbed👍👍👍. Love the grouping tip for Lightroom, that'll save me a lot of time! Just going to download the Helicon Focus 30 day trial and give that a whirl.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thanks for the sub.

[@youphototube]

Thanks Stewart. I will have to do some testing to compare. I have not found any probles stacking dng files. I will take a stack at a high ISO then compare denoise and sharpening before and after stacking in Helicon. I gess for a portfolio image it is worth the much longer process of individually AI denoise and sharpening if the end result is better. Oh, congratulations for making it to the top of Jared Polin's photo of the year.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Thank you, I’ll also do some testing just to be sure as Helicon Focus has had some updates since I last tried it. Remember, there is no right or wrong way of editing, just your preferred way of editing. Hit me up on an email if you want to chat some more.

[@robertbridgewater2959]

Hi Stewart, Thanks for your workflow and presets (I have all of them). I suggest you give Luminar Neo with the Focus Stack plugin a go as it doesn't produce the halos like Helicon does so doesn't require the extra "clean up time"😃

[@StewartWoodArt]

Luminar Neo still produces artefacts, including halos just like Helicon. It all comes down to which one you perfer personally.

[@MrKreweesti]

Thank you for sharing this Stewart! I have Helicon focus as a trial at the moment. Normally I do stacking in Photoshop, but for large stacks it's very processing intensive. Helicon handels it much more lightly, but makes much more halo's in the end product. Photoshop does this much better, but it's very intensive process. How do you compare this, as you also have these halo's as seen in this tutorial. I also work with an EM1 mark II with the 60 macro. Thanks in advance.

[@StewartWoodArt]

I perfer Helicon focus over photoshop. Try using the AB method to fix the halos.

[@TheSunnySuttons]

Other brilliant and highly educational video. ❤

[@Walking-the-coast]

Thank you, great info.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Glad it was helpful!

[@markattardo]

Awesome learning video! Interesting computer comment. I have maxbook desires with older, used and beaten M1 Air base model budget...well almost😂 For now, I'm happy my Windows desktop still chugs along.

[@StewartWoodArt]

So long as it "chugs" along and don't crash your fine.

[@Pathe-tic086]

Have followed u , fantastic.super and practically videos, direct opinions, a inspiring ... can only give high five:-)

[@pmhelsinki]

Here's the thing. Have you ever taken a series of photostacks only to find out several of the pics have a slight movement on them? Last week taken a series of mushroom stacks in the woods camera on tripod control via wifi connected pad, all looked good until Helicon focus gave the red triangle, checked my shots and out of the series of 8 photos 2 and 5 had a slight movement on them. Could this be caused by having ibis turned on on the lens? Of out tomorrow to see if I can replicate the problem and/or if it is ibis.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Lots of times, if you are on a tripod then you do need to turn off IBIS.

[@desireearthoceans1797]

Thank you, great explanations! In Helicon preferences, which "Use OpenCL hardware acceleration" setting do you set for your Mi Pro? The "M1 Pro" or the "No OpenCL acceleration" setting ? I have an M1 and if I leave it on the "M1 Pro" setting, every time I open Helicon I get an error message "Failed to initialise Open CL ..." What am I doing wrong? Helicon Focus help - not much help and is outdated.

[@StewartWoodArt]

In this video it was set to "Use OpenCL" but I have tested the "M1 Pro" and it works fine. are you using the most upto date version of Helicon Focus?

[@desireearthoceans1797]

Thanks Stewart. Yes, I think so. I bought a Pro licence late last year. I did "check for updates" and was told that my version is the latest version. 8.2.7 Pro.@@StewartWoodArt

[@StewartWoodArt]

My version is 8.2.12, also check your disk cache settings and your OS.

[@desireearthoceans1797]

Thanks again. In the Helicon preferences, the "Memory cache limit" is set to 50%. @@StewartWoodArt

[@StewartWoodArt]

@desireearthoceans1797 send me an email I show you my settings.

[@youphototube]

I sometimes work with 300-500 stacks using the 90mm macro and 1.4 teleconverter. In that situation it is only practical to edit the one stacked dng file. To speed up stacking in Helicon and Topaz it is not a fast PC that is required but a fast GPU. My recent upgrade, Geforce RTX 4070, renders really fast in Helicon. I am not a gamer!

[@StewartWoodArt]

Like i said, so long as it's stable your good.

[@alexander24176]

Q - why would you not do the stacking post color / exposure changes so that when you go into Denoise, it's only one TIFF produced?

[@StewartWoodArt]

Your talking about the DNG RAW workflow - kzbin.info/www/bejne/fqrMc52fqsyol68

[@sergiyscheblykin2554]

What’s the highest resolution of photos that can be combined? I produce extremely high resolution ortho-images (up to 2,5Gpx). Will it be possible, for example, to combine 3 photos of 2,5Gpx? Thank you.

[@StewartWoodArt]

I honestly haven’t looked into it, maybe contact the support team.

[@stevethompson8154]

Thanks I learned a better way to export the original files in to Helicon Focus. My old way I had to convert my Z8 NEF files to DNG. This works much better.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Glad it helped!

[@mat__cht]

Do you import photos directly into lightroom or do you save them in a folder and then transfer them into lightroom? i'm recently having problrems with this since microsoft photos auto enhances pictuees and so it doesn't allow me to see the original picture

[@StewartWoodArt]

I import directly into Lightroom.

[@mat__cht]

@@StewartWoodArt lots of things i still don't know you can do on lightroom. Another thing though, when i try to export the photos to helicon focus it says "helicon focus didn't return a result" any idea what might cause that?

[@printrun5]

When I tried to render my photos in Helicon, it seemed that it rendered every 3rd / 4th picture? Something like that. In your video it goes one by one. In my case it looked like Helicon is skipping. And yes, I have them numbered correctly. Weird. Dont know what is going on.

[@StewartWoodArt]

I’ve never encountered that, try contacting support.

[@ChaitanyaShukla2503]

Stacking softwares are useful for landscapes as well apart from macro focus stacking shown here.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Very true!

[@youphototube]

Hi Sewart, I love your channel. But you are doing too many steps to stack and edit in Helicon. You shoukd send your unedited files to Helicon in dng format and save the Helicon result as a dng to Lightroom. Then you only need to denoise, sharpen and edit the one stacked raw file. That is assuming you have the full version of Helicon which will stack raw images and export the raw result. Note if sending dng files to Helicon it will only accept the original raw files and will ignore any Lightroom edits that have been done to them. Is there a reason that you do not work with dng files in Helicon?

[@StewartWoodArt]

I started to see Helicon Focus "stacking" the noise together if I send the DNG files over before applying denoise to them and no denoise software could fix that mess. I apply denoise first to avoid that.

[@StewartWoodArt]

That why I use a tiff when editing so it carry’s all my edits over to helicon or photoshop.

[@youphototube]

You have this wrong Stewart and are causing yourself too much work and wasting time for no benefit. I can show you a 500 stack image all done with Helicon using dng files and the results are fantastic. Using this technique it is only necessary to do your edits on the one stacked immage as opposed to the 500 unstacked images. It makes no scene to stack any other way if you own the full version of Helicon and have access to dng stacking. The only instance you may benit from editing the unstacked files may be if you are shooting with high ISO although I have not tested the before and after results with high ISO files.

[@StewartWoodArt]

I believe you mean you do it differently not wrong, there is NO wrong or right way in anyone’s workflow. As I said, this is my preferred workflow to get the best out of the files I work with. I’ve tested stacking before noise reduction and in most cases the results are not as good.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Let’s chat about this in email as KZbin sucks for this type of conversation. I’d be interested in what camera you’re using as maybe the results are different because of different cameras?

[@PeterSmith-pg7oi]

'Promosm' 🌺

[@andyzimm3002]

20 min video. stack your stacked A/B images. Fix in photoshop. Nothing extraordinary.

[@StewartWoodArt]

Like your comment lmao!