Can Helicon Focus find series of focus brackets?

[Fudo67]

Hello all, this is my first post.

Can Helicon Focus search my folder for focus bracket shots that belong together. I did a lot of focus bracketing with a new Hasselblad X2D 100C and discovered afterwards that the camera does not identify the series in any way. Can the software possibly look in the files metadata and group files that share the same exposure settings and were taken in a sequence of time?

If Helicon can't do that, is there another software I could use?

Thank you.

[Catherine]

Hello,

There is indeed a tool for that. Go to menu - File - Batch process (or press F7), load all your photos (by dragging and dropping, or by using the "Add ..." buttons), click the cog wheel button on the right of the line you added - Split stack. There you will find options to split by time or by exposure.
"By time" means that if the next image was taken within the time limit from the last image it counts as the same stack, and if there was a longer pause it's a new stack.

[Fudo67]

Thank you for the reply. I have not downloaded the software yet. I'll try to do that today. I believe I will need to convert my fff files to tif before stacking. Can Helicon sort fff files into groups for stacking? Would I need to load all of my fff files into Helicon in order to sort them? There are over 1000 images. Does it matter that there are also many non stacked images in the folder.

[Catherine]

The number doesn't matter, and you likely won't need to convert them. Which camera model have these images been shot with?

[Fudo67]

With the Hasselblad X2D 100c.

[Catherine]

It's supported, just make sure to download and install the Adobe DNG converter.

[Fudo67]

I do not use Adobe and I want to maintain Hasselblads colors. My understanding is that the only way to maintain the colors is to convert to tif before handing the files over to anothe software.

[Catherine]

You don't have to use Adobe, it's a free tool from Adobe that Helicon Focus needs for decoding raw images. But the decision on how to use the software is entirely up to you and nothing is stopping you from pre-converting the images if you want to.

[Fudo67]

I will download the programs and give it a try.

Thank you.

[Fudo67]

I loaded my files into the batch processor and perfumed the split. After discarding the single file stacks, I was left with 92 stacks. I was hoping to use this tool to identify which of my fff files belong together and not to render all 92 stacks. Once the split function finishes, I don't see what files have been grouped together. I am only given the option to render them. Is there any way to see the file names per stack?

[Catherine]

You can render them and then click each stack to see its source images.