Helicon Soft Forum

I installed the trial version of Helicon Focus and did a test which worked very well. The only thing I don't understand is the use of the layer export.

The help function to my opinion gives little clarity about the use of this option and how to proceed with the png-files.

For safety I attach a screenshot of my Adobe Bridge window with 15 png-layers which all look very strange. Is this normal or is there an output error ??

Best, Stephan

These layers are supposed to be opened in PhotoShop. When shown all together they form the final result. Still, you can change transparency to edit final image. This is not best way to retouch image though, we recommend to use Helicon Focus retouching brushes.

Sorry,
but there must definitively be something wrong.

I attach three screen shots of Photoshop which show
- the result file
- the depth map
- the first exported layer.

I removed the transparency of the exported layer file and it can be seen quite clearly that this is just a part of the original pictures resp. the result file. All other layer files show the same crop effect (see attachment of previous post).
The depth map on the other hand, seems to fit correctly the result file.

So what its happening there ???
I want to point out that the images are from a 60k medium format camera and quite large (8956 x 6708 px). The exported layer, although apparently cropped, has the same dimensions as the result file. That really is very strange.

Another question refers to the depth map. What can it be used for ? Is it only for information purpose ?

Best, Stephan

For some reason I could not edit my previous post and attach an additional file.

So there is another bug resp. question concerning the "opacity map".

It is a small 512x512 px image which is vertically obviously distorted compared to the original pictures in landscape format (8956 x 6708 px).

And what is this tiny picture good for ???

Best, Stephan

Most probably there is some problem with format of PNG files we are writing out.

I would ask you to export layers with demo stack (Helicon Focus menu\Run demo) to check if source file have any effect. It that case please send us one of your source files and one of the exported layers. Send them by email to ... or upload to our ftp server (as described at http://www.heliconsoft.com/ftp-server/).

I repeated the focus stacking with original files converted to 8-bit depth, and now the layer export works. I attach a screenshot of my Adobe Bridge window.

Just to remember: the focus stacking also works with 16-bit file, it is just the layer export which fails.

Please tell me, if I should really upload sample files?? Be aware that one 16-bit tif file has a size of almost 250 MB !!!

Best, Stephan

Thanks for figuring out this 16 bit trick! I think we will not be able to reproduce the problem.

Stas Yatsenko wrote:Thanks for figuring out this 16 bit trick! I think we will not be able to reproduce the problem.

This answer doesn't help me. It is not a trick, but a bug !!!

In fact the layer export does not work at all with 16-bit files (which, however, is a standard configuration for professional picture handling !!)

I checked it with Windows 7 as well as with Mac OS 10.7 and on both platforms the layer export fails with 16-bit images. I also checked file size and resized the pictures down to 14MPx (from originally 60 MPx). Again the layer export failed.

It only works with 8-bit files, but this is an unacceptable restriction.

Best, Stephan

Sorry, It was typing error, I meant that we are now able to reproduce the bug and we will fix it in the next release.