Focus Stack help.

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JoelKlein

JoelKlein

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Hi.
I'm having trouble getting acceptable merged results.
I auto-aligned it in PS, then focused stacked it. The result has a noticeable artifact.
It's the same issue with Helicon.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!


Screenshot 2024-12-18 224041.jpg
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See the result Below.
Screenshot-2024-12-18-222259.png


Feel free to test this on your own.
NX-NZ87504.jpg

NX-NZ87503.jpg
 
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If there was wind, you might not be able to get total alignment. There are ways to layer a photo and brush in the area you need to fix. Will try to provide a more complete response tomorrow.
 
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In the upper right corner, there is a twig that is coming down from one branch......that gets close to a twig that is going down from another branch. Is that the area you think is mis-aligned?
 
Were both images the exact same exposure? Did you click any of the options within auto merge?

Also, you can fine tune those masks by painting in the mask with a black or white brush.
 
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Images were shot handheld.
Same everything.

Painting in thin twigs and leaves is very hard.

I focus stacking demanding a very strict technique in a controlled environment?
 
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My hands shake so I can only do focus shift work from a tripod. If you can hand hold, more power to you. However, slight variations in tilt angle or camera position can influence the stack, particularly on closer parts of the subject. Just my thoughts based on my personal skill level and experience.
 
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I do a bit of jewelry product photography and I've come to the conclusion that the stacking algorithms assume that you have solid objects of a certain size. If you have holes in your foreground where you can see through to the background - the algorithms usually get it wrong. Or if you have really really thin objects in the FG it will often mess those up as well. I haven't tried Helicon to know if the same issues exist there, but from what you're saying I'm guessing it's still a problem. You can see the granularity of the algorithms by turning on/off layers in PS. It would be nice if the granularity was on a pixel basis, but alas it isn't. (I should also say that I never turn on the blend colors option since most of the time it introduces weirdness solving a problem that I'd rather fix on my own).

For jewelry with lots of holes in it, I end up doing LOTS of manual edits to the mask. Often times I delete the furthest background layer's mask and then slowly paint in the mask of closer and closer layers. (Note this is even necessary when working from a tripod).

I also did a trip to Glacier NP recently and did some hand held focus stacking. A very minor breeze blew some FG flowers around which further compounded the problem since the BG layer had the out of focus flowers while the FG layer had the in focus flowers. Major hassle that had to be fixed up with some very selective cloning/remove brush/etc.
 
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I don't think any stacking software can perfectly align branches like this when hand held and with even a minute amount of wind. I am sure those branches moved between shots and without pixel level manipulation, the stacking software can't perfectly align the images. I would have tried shooting this scene with one image at f/11 or f/16 to try to get the whole scene in focus.

I loaded your images up in Helicon Focus and merged them. It had a hard time aligning much of anything really. Then I went into the Retouch panel and chose which image I wanted to be the source for the branches. I brushed that in and it got rid of the out of focus branches. I also did that to the foreground. Then I chose the other image and brushed in the trees in the distance. It’s not perfect by any means; you would need to work at 100% and pick which image you want to be the source…

Anyway, here’s what came out…
2024-12-19 13-48-26 (B,Radius4,Smoothing7).jpg
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