Using same alignment for several stacks

[MiB76]

Hello,

is there a way maybe in command line that i can save/store the alignment of the single images of a stack to several other stacks?
It is crucial that several stacks with just different lighting positions/color have the exact same alignment, because after stacking they need to be averaged.
Because I´m working with hundreds to thousands of stacks i somehow have to automate this process, that one stack gets aligned and the following 10 stacks get aligned exactly the same (which does not happen right now when I batch process them).

If it is not possible to somehow export or used the alignment of a stack again, how complicated would such a function be to implement?

In Zerene Stacker one can export a txt file with comma separated alignments that could later be imported again for other stacks. Such a function (via command line) would be nice to have in Helicon Focus too.

Many thanks and best regards,
Michael

[Catherine]

Hello Michael,

We were considering this feature, but the GIF makes it clear that Helicon Focus can't help with your case. It's designed to align and merge focus stacks - series of photos where ONLY the focus changes. If the point of view changes or the lighting changes, it's a different scenario for which Helicon Focus is not suited.

[MiB76]

Thanks for your reply, Catherine.

It is not the case that I use different lighting in one stack. What you see in the gif are already stacks from the same perspective, with each of them just one lighting setup. The animation shows the outputs of these stacks, but Helicon uses different alignments for each one, so size and position varies. The stacks are normal stacks. and they should have the same position and magnification. I just want to use the same alignment in several stacks. I want to let Helicon Focus make one stack, by aligning the images and the next few stacks to use these alignments (x-shift, y-shift and magnification) for aligning these new stacks with the same settings. These new stacks will just have other lighting directions but "look" from the exact same position on the object.

I would like to use Helicon Focus for this task, because it is much faster than Zerene Stacker and I need to do hundreds to thousands of stacks. In Zerene Stacker is is possible to save the alignment of each image of the stack in an xml file, and then modify this file with the filenames of the new stacks and use the xml file for their alignments.

I am developing a very high resolution 3D Scanner for insects within my PhD studies, so it would be very important to solve this problem.

[Catherine]

Thanks for the clarification, turns out there has been a confusion between our developers as to what exactly it is you wanted to do.
We want to look into this and added it to the to-do list, but it won't be soon as our hands are already full working on the next version of Helicon Focus.

[MiB76]

Hello, because almost 4 month have passed I wanted to ask when it might be implemented? What might be the time frame?
Thanks and best, Michael

[Catherine]

Hello Michael,

We haven't been able to work on this yet, I'm sorry, and I can't give you a time frame (not in the near future).

[MiB76]

Hello Catherine,

I hope you're doing well. I wanted to follow up on an issue regarding my Helicon Focus license. I purchased a one-year license, but unfortunately, I have been unable to use the software for most of this time.

Is there any chance this feature will be implemented soon? Alternatively, would it be possible for me to speak directly with one of your developers about it? It would be extremely helpful if Helicon Focus could retain the alignment settings of a stack and apply the same alignment another stacks. While a graphical UI would be nice, I would be satisfied with the ability to run this function from the terminal.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Kind regards,
Michael