Helicon Soft Forum

Just tested the new Beta a little bit ... quite impressive how fast everything works on Mac M2.

The only thing I was missing on the first view is a magnifier to see some area in the picture in 100%.
Switched to 100% I can't move inside the picture. Anything I missed ore something you have to look in?

Klinke wrote: 02.04.2026 10:31 The only thing I was missing on the first view is a magnifier to see some area in the picture in 100%.
Switched to 100% I can't move inside the picture. Anything I missed ore something you have to look in?

This is a known bug. Click and hold the right mouse button during you move the mouse.
See here: viewtopic.php?p=28490#p28490

I should have read posts to 9.0. first ...

So waiting to that get fixed in the future and the tack-pad does allow to move in the picture quite now.

in Preview
Large Windows Wheel does not show action
63 x 23.5M images take a long time to load into preview
but when the images are loading into the main part of the app the Wheel does show action as the images are loaded into the stack
The ability to see which images are going to contribute to the stacked image will be very valuable

The spacebar also works for panning now, hold Space and hold the left mouse button.

el48tel wrote: 02.04.2026 12:35 in Preview
Large Windows Wheel does not show action

What do you mean by this? Just the mouse scroll wheel for zooming? It definitely works in the Preview window (at least, I never saw it not working).

Ah, yes, we're working on making it faster. The progress indicator works for JPEG/TIFF images but possibly not for raw.

First - congrats to this new version of Helicon and Happy Easter!
It seems to be much faster than the 8.x with method B... still testing, but so far:
stack with 139 images: 1min in 8.3.10, 17secs in 9.0.1, method B on Mac M1 = 3 times faster
BUT - a stack with 90images and with method C: 12 secs in 8.3.10, 17 secs in 9.0.1 = slower than before???

However - some other issues (I know - it's a Beta!):
- side-by-side install on Mac OS works, but the 9 starts as "Trial", not licensed ...
- no zoom (left mouse) and no moving around (right mouse) in Preview-windows possible at all on my system - works in 8.3.10, not in 9
- "File"-"Open Stack" does not work

So far I often used the batch method to divide a stack into a couple of substacks and manually feeding the results again with another method (B or C) - according to the info about improvements with version 9 this process should now work automatically -- but how??

best regards

153 stack method B v9.0.1 ~50sec
153 stack method B v8.3.11 ~50sec
153 stack method C v9.0.1 ~1m30sec
153 stack method C v8.3.11 ~55sec

Hi, happy Easter! Thanks for your feedback.

You should compare either the first render of the stack to the first render, or the second/subsequent renders to subsequent renders. What I mean by the first render: you open Helicon Focus, add your images and press Render. Especially if your files are in a raw format, this essentially measures the performance of the raw decoder and not that of Helicon Focus. Wait for the first render to complete and press "Render" again, now it will be a lot faster. That's probably how you got the 3x difference between versions, because otherwise it shouldn't be possible.

Also mind your OpenCL acceleration option, but it should already be identical between versions 8 and 9 (short of some failure to activate OpenCL).
For benchmarking the performance of the actual rendering algorithm it's best to use Helicon Focus Preferences - Performance - Run benchmark. This eliminates side factors like the raw converter, speed of your disk drive where the files are read from/written to, etc.

Marc_R wrote: 03.04.2026 16:12 - side-by-side install on Mac OS works, but the 9 starts as "Trial", not licensed ...
- no zoom (left mouse) and no moving around (right mouse) in Preview-windows possible at all on my system - works in 8.3.10, not in 9

Confirmed, we'll fix it, and both are on Mac only. Also, the touchpad should work fine if you have one.

Marc_R wrote: 03.04.2026 16:12 - "File"-"Open Stack" does not work

Seems to work fine, double-click any file in the folder.

Marc_R wrote: 03.04.2026 16:12 So far I often used the batch method to divide a stack into a couple of substacks and manually feeding the results again with another method (B or C) - according to the info about improvements with version 9 this process should now work automatically -- but how??

In the new version 9 stack splitting by image count can be done via the new "Render substacks" dialog:
https://www.heliconsoft.com/focus/help9 ... RSUBSTACKS

You can open it from the context menu of the Source Images list. It allows you to split the stack by number of files, set the overlap, and, if needed, enable automatic stacking of the substack results.
You can also select several images in the Outputs panel, right-click, and use Stack outputs:
https://www.heliconsoft.com/focus/help9 ... CK_OUTPUTS

Thanks for the quick answers, Catherine!
I did some more tests with version 9, of importance might be the specifics of my system:
Mac M1 desktop, 16GB
non-Apple two-button mouse
Mac OS Tahoe 26.4

With regards to performance-improvements:
I did the same stack of 139images in JPEG with version 8.3.10 and the 9er Beta (exact same settings for adjustments, scaling etc.)
1) method B >> 9beta = 30secs VS 8.3.= 1:04mins
2) method C >> 9beta = 30secs VS 8.3 = 30secs
The internal Benchmark (Preferences/Performance) gives 7.02secs and transfer 10,457MiB/sec with Helicon 9,
8.8secs / transfer 7,049MiB/secs with Helicon 8.3
Possibly a performance change because of OS-internal improvements??

Regarding the issues I see on my Mac:
- no moving inside preview-window possible with my mouse (works in 8 - keep right mouse pressed and move image)
- no "sliders" appear on the side and on the bottom when image is scaled larger than window
- no mini-window with 100%-view appears in preview-window when left mouse button is clicked
- menu-items "File / Open Stack" and "File / Open Video" without function (no new window opens to select files)

and finally the idea / question if it might be possible to add an option in the substack-function to render the substacks with another method / another setting? Whenever I select the substacks (right click - "Stack Outputs" and try to change the method or its settings, it will revert to the method/settings used by the substacks...
At least I have some positive results when rendering substacks e.g. with B and the final image with C (less halos and/or highlights).

Hi,

Sorry I know I am new here, but have been waiting for a ARM/Silicon version for a while.

I just noted that when running CaptureOne (with the Helicon plugin installed) MAC OS reports that some Intel code still exists. I originally thought it was CaptureOne but it seems to be something in the plugin?

Is this known?

Thank you

Hi, the Capture One plugin is probably built for the Intel architecture at the moment, yes. We'll update it later.

I'm testing the new release by creating sub-stacks with the batch process (splitting 150 images into sub-stacks of 6 images using Method B), then importing and stacking again with Method C.
It happens (though this also occurred a long time ago with a previous version) that when I retouch the image, the reference window on the left suddenly becomes darker (see attached image), and this effect is random. If I move forward to other images the rendering is fine; if I come back, the previously darkened image is back to normal, but others are now dark (when they weren't before).
No variation in lighting was present during the acquisition session, and when retouching the image on the right, the colours are correct even when using the "darkened" image.

Would it be possible to add an option (within the Substacking section of the source image settings) to substack using one method (e.g. Method B) and then render the full stack across all the sub-stacks using a different method (e.g. Method C)?

Thank you!
Enrico