Increasing contrast for better focus stacking

Shooting in macro mode, techniques, tips & tricks
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PhilS
Posts: 32
Joined: 12.10.2020 21:41

Increasing contrast for better focus stacking

Post by PhilS »

I've photograph a few low-contrast images this week. Today I had a new idea. I want to know if anyone else has tried this, and if so if they've got any advice.

Today, I photographed an orchid -- almost all very light tones. My first HeliconFocus composite had a lot of out-of-focus areas. I suspect that HeliconFocus judges "in-focus" by local contrast. Can anyone confirm or disagree with that?

I raised the contrast in a second conversion from raw to tif files, used Helicon to make a composite image, and then lowered the contrast back to where I wanted it in Photoshop. This was very successful. I needed to do very little retouching in HeliconFocus to make a well-focused final image. Hooray! Anybody have comments or ideas about this method?
orchid-3-a-no-retouching.jpg
low contrast Helicon composite
(96.49 KiB) Not downloaded yet
orchid-3-high-contrast,-even-higher,-no-retouching.jpg
high contrast Helicon composite
(164.6 KiB) Not downloaded yet
orchid-3-highest-contrast-with-retouching-2-and-stamping.jpg
almost finished composite with Photoshop local changes to density and contrast, and halo fixing with the stamp tool
(163.63 KiB) Not downloaded yet
marceppy
Posts: 5
Joined: 30.10.2022 21:51

Re: Increasing contrast for better focus stacking

Post by marceppy »

Pretty interesting… will keep in mind
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