Saving individual aligned frames

[Warren Sarle]

I have recently compared Helicon Focus 4.80, CombineZP, and Photo
Acute. On some examples, such as the attached result, Helicon Focus
clearly produces the sharpest output. But unlike CombineZP and Photo
Acute, Helicon Focus seems to provide no way to save all the individual
frames after they have been aligned. I am aware that Helicon Focus
contains some simple retouching tools, but it is obviously no match for
Photoshop in this regard. And since I prefer to photograph live creatures,
there are usually moving legs or, especially, wiggling antennae to deal
with, as in the attachment, which is a rather mild case. These body parts
often have to be moved and rotated in order to line up properly.

I am reluctant to pay money for Helicon Focus until it can save all the
individual aligned frames in a convenient way.

[Guest]

Apparently you can export the stack as an animation. The aligned images are saved in the animation output folder. Choose 100% size and high quality jpegs. It is a bit fiddly, and there would be a loss of quality if your original files were tiffs, but it achieves what you want.

[Warren Sarle]

Thanks, saving the animation almost works, but the animation images
are scaled differently than the final image that is saved in the ordinary
way, even when the animation size is set to 100%.

[Guest]

I tried it myself and the images are the same aligned images that Helicon uses to generate the focussed output. You can test this by running them back through Helicon again, with alignment turned off, and you'll find the output is pretty much the same.

Having said that, you're right there is no rescaling of the whole image. Perhaps Helicon doesn't do whole image resizing but just moves bits around till they fit. CombineZ does do resizing, but last time I checked the resizing algorithm was crude and lost sharpness. Try Zerene Stacker.

[Guest]

Just tried creating an animation in Helicon Focus again, and this time the pictures were resized, so I don't know what's going on there. Maybe different stacks are treated differently. Maybe I forgot to click a button.