Focus Blending Software Q's??

Does anyone have a preferred software that they used?

I've sample Helicon Focus but haven't tried what CS4 has to offer.

Maybe there is some other software out there that does the same thing?

Of course pixel quality in the end is very important.


Anyhow, I would love to hear your suggestions. Thanks!

Hey Steve, I've played around with focus blending and the program I worked with was Combine ZP. I won't state its the best, but the price is right! ( Free ). The developer is always working on tweaks and improvements to the program. He is very helpful and always willing to help solve any problems you may run into. He has just released a new version of the program today.
http://www.hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZP/News.htm

There is also a Yahoo users group : http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/combinez/

Harold

I think it works fine but the output for it turns out to be jpegs. Which doesn't work because I'm using prophotoRGB Tiffs. It's better than nothing.

there is a program called Tufuse that is supposed to be really good.
I've never tried CS4 for that, but if you want to send me samples I can run them for you (that is if you don't have CS4 of course :D).

I've used CS4 auto blend (after using auto align!) and it works well although slow and you need LOTS of memory for it. I have a problem using more than 3 raw images with my desktop, which is pretty full but can run a max of 5 on my laptop - but It takes a long time. Other than that it works well

I use CombineZM (one version earlier than ZP), and I'm pretty happy with the results I get. It allows a lot of adjustments if one is willing to learn about them all and then spend the time making them, and I haven't done either; I've relied on the 4 main "macros" that come pre-loaded: "Do Stack," "Weighted Avg Correction" (improves Do Stack), "Do Weighted Average" (when the first 2 aren't satisfactory), and "Do Soft Stack." From what I've heard, it is not as fast as Helicon Focus, its interface is much plainer, and it's not optimized to run faster on multi-core systems (as one of the Helicon versions is). I haven't used Helicon, but I've seen comparision images, and it seems that some image characteristics make one preferable to the other; i.e., with some stacks, Helicon gets "confused" and CZM doesn't, but with others CZM creates more artifacts than Helicon.

I also have the freeware version of TuFuse. It requires that the images in the stack be aligned before TuFuse is run; this isn't a horrible disadvantage if the stack is small, but beyond 5 or 6 images, it is a pain. The free TuFuse is a tiny program with no interface at all; it's run from the command line. It works well, and it also has some idiosyncrasies that make its results a little different (better or worse, depending on the kind of images, and I haven't done enough comparisons to be able to generalize).

Steve, I've set my CombineZM-output files to be PNGs, so they don't have to be JPGs. I don't know if 16-bit color is supported, though; I've used only 8-bit.

Younes, I have a set of 5 images (JPGs, about 5MB each) that I've used TuFuse and CombineZM on, and I don't have CS4. If you'd run them, I'll post the resulting images so we can see and compare.

Does anyone want to try them in Helicon Focus?

Any software that outputs the files as tif would be optimal becuase you can take advantage of ProPhotoRGB. I tried that with combineZP and the files come out as jpegs and the colors are all messed up. Can't have that, it would work fine if I wasn't planning on printing files and just posting to the web.

Well now that I think about it if the scene that is being put together is normal daylight scene with bland colors or non vibrant colors then srgb jpegs wouldn't really make any kind of noticeable difference. Sometimes my pickyness just drives me crazy..

Thanks for all the info Rosemarie

Well, I guess I have to buy CS4 so I can get the upgrade price now so I don't get screwed in the future. Helicon seems to be the running best for now so I'll just get a trail version on the laptop for now.

Steve, CZP does indeed output as tif. I use CZP and/or CS4 depending on which provides the better output.

I've used most of these progs, and for me helicon focus is still the clear winner.
CS4 does a decent job but as noted you need lots and lots of memory or it will crash.
(think 4+gb of free ram)
if you need to blend 20 or so images you can almost be certain that photoshop wont be able
to handle it (well the ram req for that)
while helicon focus blends those in a matter of seconds.

Wim.