Focus Stacking MANY photos: Macro

[Dean Wilson]

I have Adobe Creative Cloud and I generally edit in Lightroom and Photoshop when needed. I regards to Focus Stacking which is your preferred method when you have 15 or more photos to Stack? This is for stacking ONLY.

Lightroom > Photoshop > Lightroom
Canon DPP > Lightroom

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[jcass]

I've always used Lightroom/Photoshop combo as well. But recently I've found the results lacking because artifacts around areas that I would expect to be clean. I am considering Helicon, but I don't have the time in the next couple of months to revisit some recent stacks in order to evaluate Helicon. I do find the in-camera jpg and Lightroon/Photoshop lacking on some edges.

For example, in this focus stack combined in Lightroom/Photoshop, I would expect the leading (closest) edges of the circled leaf to be in focus.

 

[LCPete]

I haven’t used Adobe for a few years but have found Affinity Photo excellent for image stacking of macro and close up images
I convert to Tiff with DXO 8 then run the stack in Affinity, I find anyway the important things are to allow a bit of focus overlap between each frame and avoid subject movement