Helicon Soft Forum

Hello there,

I'm new to Helicon Focus Pro and unfortunately I have already found a problem which I cannot get rid of. Whenever I try to render an image stack from DNG files (Fujifilm X-T2 RAW files exported from Lightroom via DNG), I get a strange pattern all over the image, no matter which rendering method or radius/smoothing settings I use. It makes the output file unusable. See attached image. When I use the same images but in JPEG format instead of DNG, this error does not occur.

Am I doing something wrong or is this an error of Helicon Focus Pro?

Greetings
Thomas

Anyone?

We've managed to reproduce the problem, but we need a bit more time to understand if the problem is about Helicon Focus or about Lightroom. We are investigating this further and will let you know about our findings and solutions

Hello Catherine,

thank you for your answer. Looking forward to reading your finding and a possible solution for that.
Is this unique to Fujifilm .RAF files or were you able to reproduce this with raw files from other camera manufacturers as well? By the way, I also tried it with .RAF files from a Fujifilm X-T4, with the same result as with the X-T2 files.

Have a great weekend.
Thomas

Pardon me for jumping in - This seems likely to be due to the X-Trans sensor's unusual 6x6 filter array in the raw image. (A lot of RAW software has this issue. There's a nice entry on Wikipedia.) This explains why your JPG works fine. A 16-bit TIF export might be a better choice to retain the dynamic range of the image. The free RawTherapee software can de-mosaic this sensor, not sure if it can save as a DNG, but perhaps worth a look.

Bob,

absolutely no need to be sorry - thanks for your input! I have also thought about X-Trans being part of the problem. Just not sure, where the real problem starts (ACR RAW conversion can't be the problem as I do all my editing in LR and PS and I have never encountered a problem like this). I will definitely try your suggestion of using 16-bit TIF.
Still, I am looking forward to the solution of this problem, as I really like to be able to do RAW editing after focus stacking (what RAW-in-DNG-out was meant for).

Thanks again!

Thomas

We are still not sure where the problem originates. We're in the process of updating the DNG toolkit (the part that is inside the Helicon Focus application), maybe it will resolve the problem. If not, we will investigate further.

Hi Catherine,

thank you for the information! Hope that you'll be able to find a solution for that.

Thanks again!