Helicon Soft Forum

Hello.

Fairly new to Helicon so forgive me if this is a stupid question.

In my normal stacking workflow I do my initial processing in Adobe Camera Raw and then open the images as layers in PS and stack there. However, some types of images (most, in fact) come out better if I stack in Helicon. But after I have processed my images in ACR, when I open them in Helicon none of the ACR corrections show up. It just seems to open the original files as they were shot in-camera. This doesn't happen if I go right from ACR to layers in PS. Am I missing something? Since I often do extensive editing in ACR prior to stacking, if Helicon won't recognize those changes, then it just won't work for me, since the workaround would be very time-consuming. Do I need to upgrade from Lite to Pro? Thanks

These corrections do not get "baked" into the images themselves, they pretty much get stored in the text form, just the list of tools used and their parameters (to be applied later when the image is actually rendered). And only Adobe software can process and apply these adjustments. After processing your stack in Helicon Focus save the result as DNG, and look for a way to apply the exact same adjustments to the resulting file as you did for the source files. The fact that Helicon Focus didn't see these adjustments shouldn't matter much.

Using the RAW to DNG workflow, the ACR processed RAW files appear in HF 'as shot' ... without the adjustments applied in ACR. I assume this is because HF is working directly with only the pixel/photosite data. However, the ACR setting of the the last image (from its sidecar XMP file) are added to the output DNG file and they regain their ACR appearance. This does not happen if the file is saved as a JPG. So a RAW to DNG workflow may 'solve' this problem.