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Increasing contrast for better focus stacking

Posted: 21.02.2022 23:53
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

Re: Increasing contrast for better focus stacking

Posted: 05.11.2022 13:55
by marceppy
Pretty interesting… will keep in mind