Macro Focus Stacking: Advanced Tutorial for Merging and Retouching

[@johnbeattyphotos]

Great video sir. Not sure if many do this any more but to separate my stacks or panos, I will take a shot of my hand as a seperator.

[@johangrobbelaar7331]

Ahh, thank you Andrew! I learned a lot from your method of cleaning up 'halos'.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thanks for watching!

[@youphototube]

Oh, love your mushroom composition with the framing of the small mushroom . Looks like a family sheltering a child!

[@ickebins6948]

Thank you for the video. Nice that someone shows how much time you need to make a stack really perfect. Helicon is a great tool but you still have to factor in the rework.

[@debbiewitt7028]

Great video Andrew, you are a good teacher, easy to understand and follow. I love photographing mushrooms first I’ve heard of Helicon I will definitely look into it.

[@samelogio7441]

Thanks Andrew. This was extremely helpful.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Happy to hear it, thanks for watching!

[@davekwcc]

Great tutorial, thank you. Some useful tips

[@stephen-bolton]

Great video and lovely result. You should load the sharper images using the f9 key as the curser suggests. Loads quicker that all that scrolling.

[@thomasriera2030]

Very useful video, thank you! The details matter so, it is good to see the lengths that you take in retouching. I love the retouching tool in Helicon Focus and also use it to clean up the background. However, I learned some good approaches from your PS cleanup.

[@gary.kenyon]

Very informative and a Stunning Shot Thank you

[@scarcesense6449]

Thanks, Andrew! This is a great tutorial. I've always struggled trying to do this with photoshop. That retouching tool would make all the difference on my many failed attempts. My camera's in-built focus blending produces a lot of similar artefacts as photoshop. I guess if you want the best results you just have to go to the professionals.

[@robintaylor7374]

another cracking video - thanks as ever

[@19Photographer76]

Great job Andrew! I've noticed that each Rendering method gives different background results. I've started to Render with each method and then use them as my Source images. I will sometimes add an image that has the perfect background into the mix. Give it a try...

[@TimvanderLeeuw]

I think the fuzzy halos are not just focus breathing, but are also caused by elements in the image being larger when they're out-of-focus than when they in focus. So they cover what's behind them. When that is just a bit of background that is not a problem, but somehow it seems to frequently happen to me that I have parts of an image for which I have no frame with good focus.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

That's exactly the issue I believe! I think it's also exacerbated by using focus, which changes the relative size of the subjects, in a way that using a slider wouldn't. But I don't have/don't use a slider so I just have to deal with what I have!

[@TimvanderLeeuw]

@@AndrewLanxonPhotography I do have a slider but it's all manual, so it doesn't have quite the same speed or precision as an automatic slider or in-camera focus bracketing.

[@marioherodotus996]

Maybe I didn't understand, but when you were going through the list to select a file that was sharp in a certain area, so you could retouch from there, you can actually just press F9 (on a Mac you may need Fn + F9 according) I thought this might help simplify your retouching.

[@TheWescombe]

Thanks I was having fuzziness on edges of things from last weekend shoot, this helped me a lot to correct it.

[@TheWescombe]

Also, what can I do if i want the background directly behind the subject ( wide depth of field) shape but there is fuzziness from the edge of the subject, I this makes sense..

[@duringthemeanwhilst]

stop eating the mushrooms and it'll go away!! ;-)

[@jcynix]

To find the start and end of a stack I first take an image with my fingers in front of the lense horizontally and afterwards vertically, so the proto-stack is bracketed by these two easily recognizable markers.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

It's a great technique and one I normally always do (and in fact did for some of the other stacks on that day) but for some reason I didn't do it for all the stacks!

[@barrychidlow785]

I follow you a lot and particularly like your fungi macro stuff. This video is most helpful as I have been having issues with halo or ghosting as you are demoing here. I am just getting used to Helicon but love what I am getting. Thanks

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thanks, I'm glad it was useful!

[@duringthemeanwhilst]

nice one Andrew. I find re-touching in HF easier than PS. I guess it's because it's just like a replacement, and not using AI or the like to generate a fill area?

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

I like using both. PS gives me tools I'm more familiar with, though using photoshop doesn't mean you're forced to use AI or gen fill. As you see, they aren't tools I've used in my retouching process.

[@jens822]

Thanks for this video. I use helicon pro a lot and like the possibility to use the output of other methods and/or settings a source image for retouching. Method A is very good for the background, as it is reducing noise, but the stacking itself is often not as good as with the other methods). Method B produces natural looking surfaces but has often problems with overlapping areas (blurry edges), method C is much better for overlapping areas but the surfaces may look oversharpened and higlights may be blown out. What I do often is having method B with a high radius like 24 (which would reduce the halos a lot btw) as a base image and using the output of C for retouching the edges and mayby the A output for the background. As I use the Raw-in-DNG-out method in helicon, the subsequent processing can be done allmost exclusivly in lightroom.

[@19Photographer76]

I stay in Bridge/Photoshop and use the Raw-in-DNG-out. What's quick is just dragging the files over to Helicon and with GPU turned on in the Pro version, the process flies. If I do have any ghosting, I just correct that file before running the final stack process.

[@steveking6204]

I believe you get better results by exporting the RAWs to Helicon and getting a DNG file returned. It is then editable in Camera RAW and is a more maleable file.

[@MrKreweesti]

Nice video Andrew! But why you don’t use the F9 key to immediately go to the source file in Helicon Focus? Especially when you have so many files.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Thanks! Because I didn't realise that was a thing! Thanks for the tip!

[@rjm-w3616]

Any more tips or resources for work flow techniques or keystrokes shortcuts

[@igordmitriv8964]

Thanks for sharing

[@pauleklein5979]

Thx. Andrew

[@youphototube]

Hey Anderw, why don't you send DNG files to Helicon? The advantabe being that you can do your colour and white balance edits to the stacked immage. Surely DNG is more versatile than TIFF? Am I missing something? Method B mostly renders the best details but not on edges and is much more prone to halos than method C. I always render both B and C then mask the halos, poor edges, hairs etc in methd B with method C in Photoshop. This is especially neccessary when doing insect portraits with complex hairy edges.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Some great advice here and I honestly haven't considered blending images from two different outputs before! You're not missing anything in terms of DNG Vs TIFF, I just have my way of working, which is to do colour correction before the stack. Then I'm only dealing with shadow/contrast detail etc afterwards, which TIFF, as a lossless format, is superb for. It's not THE way to do it, it's just the way I like to operate.

[@kobiorama]

Do you find that focus stacking with a rail gives you better results? I think that the focus breathing issue is because the automated stacking doesn't move the camera, it moves the focus and that is causing the issues. I know its easier than doing manual rail (or automated rail) focusing in field but it does seem that it gives better results. I saw that in the good old days of magic lantern on canon - funny how it took them 15 years or so to implement focus stacking on mirrorless when someone already had it on DSLR :)

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

I think using a rail would certainly help eliminate focus breathing as an issue, but I don't have and have never used a rail. The problem I'd have with a rail is that it's a much slower, manual process, whereas using the auto focus bracketing function allows me to shoot 100+ images in a matter of seconds. That's especially important when I'm shooting handheld, which is my preferred way of shooting these subjects.

[@kobiorama]

​@@AndrewLanxonPhotography thanks. I think I'll give it a try with the a7r5 focus bracketing hand held. have you tried using zerene for focus stacking? I seem to get cleaner results with it. also I think that the algorithm of the stacking influences the halo effect during stacking

[@AndrewBerube41]

Can you use a flash with the focus bracketing mode?

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Unfortunately not, no, as the camera uses an electronic shutter for focus bracketing and the flash requires a mechanical shutter to sync with. Also the fast speed of images would be too fast for most flashes, especially at high power. For focus bracketing, you'll need to use continual LED lighting.

[@williamkosanda7858]

Andrew, I noticed that you shot the scene at f/2.8. I have been shooting mushrooms at maybe f/8 or higher. Of course, this leads to a great reduction in the quantity of exposures. Do you see an advantage to shooting wide open? I can see the disadvantage in that it requires far more exposures to cover the required depth of field. Thanks!

[@SteveSSBB]

For myself the 2 advantages of shooting at a wider aperture are lower ISO when handheld and a much more pleasing background after stacking.

[@williamkosanda7858]

Faster shutter speed too, in case some of the grass or leaves are moving around.

[@AndrewLanxonPhotography]

Hi! As Steve mentions in his reply, the advantage for me is maintaining that shallow depth of field in the background after the stack. I don't want absolutely everything in the image to be sharp, only my subject, thereby allowing it to stand out more against a softly blurred background. At f8 or higher the background (in this case, various trees and shrubs) would be much more visible and likely cause distractions in frame. By shooting wide open and focusing so close, everything more than a few feet away will be completely blurred out giving great separation between subject and background. Downside, as you've said, is that I need to shoot a lot more frames, but when I'm using focus bracketing with fast CFExpress cards I have no problem in rattling off 100+ image in sequence in just a few seconds.

[@BalaKrishnan-sh3vt]

if i want to maintain a 1:1 across all pictures, how do i do that ? i have focus stacking in my camera, and i can use Helicon focus, i start with 1:1, as the focus ring changes, the last image that was captured is no longer 1:1

[@ScottButler-q1h]

What kind of file size are you looking at during the stacking? I shoot a Sony a7r iv....61mp images.