Helicon Soft Forum

I've found the trial version of HF to work very well as long at the camera is on a tripod and the subject has no movement. But if I'm shooting handheld (braced), or working with a subject that can move slightly as in the accompanying example, I get one or more image ghosts in the final run.

The image was cropped from the full file. The image was cropped from the full file. The golden bars seen in the upper left of the prominent wing should be a single bar as in the other, out of
focus wing (it took off before I could get that last shot).

The default prefs were I think 3% and 5 degrees, and I also tried it with higher prefs that were set to %5 and 10 degrees. This yielded a slight improvement over the defaults. But increasing the settings beyond this added no further benefit (I also tried all settings at 10).

I'm new at this, and may be missing an important piece or two in the setup or settings. The maximum displacement of the wing in the sample only varied by about 1.6% among the shots (as compared to image size).

I would appreciate any assistance offered to improve on these results.

Thanks!
Dane
www.inner-light-images.com

Well, the program needs two pictures of the same perspective, or else how could it combine the shots? There are tools and brushes in cases where it is impossible to combine the shots automatically.

Ariel wrote:Well, the program needs two pictures of the same perspective, or else how could it combine the shots? There are tools and brushes in cases where it is impossible to combine the shots automatically.

Apparently I neglected to mention that the image above was one of a ten image focus set, and that they were all taken from the same position (hand braced on the ground).

The help info on HF states that it can compensate for a certain percentage of displacements up/down, right/left, or rotation. On the info page it says: "Helicon Focus also aligns images as objects often change their size and position from shot to shot. This function is especially important for macrophotography."

It does not seem to align very well in my own experience, and I am trying to get some help with improving my use of the program and understanding its limitations.

Hints or tips from more experienced macro users would be appreciated!

It appears to be more important than the info implies to use a tripod to eliminate movement between shots, but that is not possible with a skittish dragonfly on a warm day. So I can only try to do better with my hand held bracing when a tripod is not feasible.

I eliminated 5 of the ten images and ran the set again, which improved things considerably. The majority of the double imaging is gone, but there is still a lot of retouching required. (See attached crop of image).

I tried to use the copy source tool, but it did not align well between the source and destination images. For now, I will stick with Photoshop for that purpose.

I know I am working with a very difficult subject here, with transparent wings overlapping with each other and other things, but I was hoping for better alignment from the program to reduce the need for extensive retouching. Still, with this type of subject, HF might be better than assembling a composite image manually in Photoshop, especially one like this.

Okay. But working with dragonflies is very hard. if they move their wing just a little, that is not a change in perspective and thus cannot be compensated. An option you have is, for any picture with the wing in a different position relative to the body, for those areas of those pictures, you can manually blur (like in Helicon Filter) those spots. Combining in Focus later will ignore that area.

Ariel wrote:Okay. But working with dragonflies is very hard. if they move their wing just a little, that is not a change in perspective and thus cannot be compensated. An option you have is, for any picture with the wing in a different position relative to the body, for those areas of those pictures, you can manually blur (like in Helicon Filter) those spots. Combining in Focus later will ignore that area.

Thanks for that tip - I will give it a try when needed.

For clarity, I am defining "perspective" as the angle of the camera to the subject and each of its parts. So any change in camera position (that changes its angle to the subject) or movement of a subject part that is not perpendicular to the line through the camera lens, will result in a change in subject rendering (shape) in the photo.

I would think this is what HF would have trouble with, so perhaps you are meaning something else by "perspective." Could you please clarify that for me?

Thank you!

Well, yes. Perspective means viewing angle, and that can change to any angle in a sphere. When the bug moves a wing, the bug and camera are in the same relative position (so perspective stays the same), but the image you are taking is different and can't really blend properly. The program tries to take the most focused area from each picture in the stack. If one out of ten pictures the bug has its wing over the blurry background, the program will see the wing as sharper than any other picture for that area.

The program can correct for perspective, but only certain types of perspective. Rotation, shift to the right-left, up-down, and distance. Not a change in the angle of the camera's lens.