Which slabbing program do you prefer ?

[All Ex]

So far I (in my effort to get in thatch with some slabbing programs , and finally decide which one I`ll use in the future) tried BUGSLABBER 1.1, ZereneVS, SlabberJockey--V1.0 (which in order to work demands the presence in your PC of Access Runtime.

When I`m trying to download it from: http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidaccessruntime it gives me the error : "502 - Web server received an invalid response while acting as a gateway or proxy server. There is a problem with the page you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed. When the Web server (while acting as a gateway or proxy) contacted the upstream content server, it received an invalid response from the content server."

So neither this worked. I've tried next with the"Make Slabing Script" witch did not worked too. Then I followed the suggestions of this forum, exactly in: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... hp?t=15075
the site administrator rjlittlefield proposed a workflow which goes like this:

• •Launch ZS
  •Load all source images
  •Stack > Align All Frames
  •Select images 1-20
  •Stack Selected (PMax)
  •Select images 11-30
  •Stack Selected (PMax)
  •repeat previous two steps for all other slabs.
  •Select all output images
  •File > Save Output Image(s) to some scratch directory.
  •Exit ZS
  •Re-launch ZS
  •Load the images you just saved
  •Uncheck everything at Options > Preferences > Alignment
  •Stack > Align & Stack All (DMap).

I followed his steps ending with a photo witch was lacking of color, in more detail:
I was shooting a copper miniature witch came up silver in color.

• *Was the fault that it was consisted of only 32 stacks,
  *Was the fault that I am using windows 8.1
  *Any other thought about a potential, witch I`m not aware of, problem?

I would appreciate any answer and I would be grateful if anyone can help me with that problem.

Always yours,

[Chris S.]

Hello Alex,

You probably know this, but with a shallow stack on the order of 32 images, little or nothing is gained by slabbing. This said, if I understand you correctly, you’re currently using a shallow stack to test slabbing utilities for later, much deeper stacks. If you are just getting started in focus stacking, you may want to postpone slabbing until other elements of your work are going well--it's an advanced topic.

Also, any slabbing utility will eventually give you the same results (with a caveat or two) from Zerene Stacker. What the slabbing utilites do is make it quick and easy to create a batch script that Zerene Stacker will run. The batch scripts from the slabbing utilities are much the same. The main difference between these utilities is what kind of computers they run on, and how you interact with them.

The short answer is that at the time of this post, Bill Edridge’s Bugslabber is the slabbing utility I’d recommend for most people. It runs on MacIntosh and Windows computers (at least), has a user-friendly interface, and is very full-featured.

SlabberJockey is a utility I wrote for myself, and share with anybody who cares to use it. When I wrote it, it was the only slabbing utility with a graphical interface. It runs only on Windows computers. I was going to add a couple of features, but decided not to bother after Bugslabber included them. (Bill and I have communicated offline, and we both feel more like cooperating than competing—remember, we are giving these utilities away.) The presence of these features is the caveat I alluded to earlier—but many users probably won’t need them. SlabberJockey does require the presence of Microsoft Access (either the paid-for full version, or the free Runtime version, which is downloadable from Microsoft).

The learning curve for either of these utilities is very short, as they both have user-friendly graphical user interfaces. Two other utilities have also worked well in my brief tests: Andrea Hallgass’ Slabmaker, which also has a GUI, and Kieran Jones’ MakeSubStackingScript, which uses a very user-friendly command-line interface. If either of these had existed before I wrote SlabberJockey, I wouldn’t have bothered writing it. (I also feel this way about Bugslabber.) The predecessor of them all is Elf’s ZereneVS, which is probably very powerful, but I had trouble using it.*

In the end, it doesn’t matter which utility you use, so long as you are comfortable with it. But no matter which utility you choose, you may want to read the how-to pdf that I wrote for SlabberJockey. It contains a lot of general information on slabbing that you may find helpful.

When I`m trying to download it from: http://r.office.microsoft.com/r/rlidaccessruntime it gives me the error : "502 - Web server received an invalid response while acting as a gateway or proxy server. There is a problem with the page you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed. When the Web server (while acting as a gateway or proxy) contacted the upstream content server, it received an invalid response from the content server."

The link works for me. I would suspect that either the download server wasn't working when you tried it, or that something on your computer is blocking the download. This is quite possible, as the download, while safe, may look like malware to your system's protective utilities--so you may have to temporarily disable them.

--Chris

*edited to reflect correction noted in later post by MaxRockbin

[All Ex]

Thank you Chris S. I must confess that dealing with all that utilities I got a little bit confused. Wright now I was dealing with Slabmaker , I guess it is time to fall asleep since I`ve been doing that all the way through the morning . I`ve guest it somehow, that my stacks were too shallow, l think it is time to start running deeper stacks and after a small problem with my gear after a couple of weeks I`ll be ready for a much more comprehensive start, in the meanwhile I will be following all the threads in your forum to always get informed and educated. After all I am very decided with all this situation.

thank you again Chris,
For your time and your patience.

[MaxRockbin]

For the record Andrea Hallgass’ Slabmaker utility (v1.3) has a gui (not command line driven). If it was, it's not anymore.

It's the one I use. I've been meaning to try one of the others and downloaded them, but Slabmaker is fast, easy and it works for me, so I haven't had much reason to noodle around.

[Chris S.]

Hmm. Clearly, you're right, Matt.

The Slabmaker GUI you posted looks familiar to me, so it probably did exist during my brief test. So my memory was wrong. I do recall testing, since writing SlabberJockey, two different utilities with command line interfaces, and thought Slabmaker was one of them. (ZereneVS is command-line driven, but I have not used it since writing SlabberJockey, as I had problems with it). Perhaps my memory is being tricked by a couple of different versions of MakeSubStackingScript that I've looked at, unless there is another utility that I've checked out but don't recall.

Regardless, thank you for the correction! (I've edited my post to include it.)

There is no great reason to try a different slabbing utility, if you are already familiar with one such utility, and it works for you.

Blugslabber permits using either PMax or DMap to crate the slabs. (So does the version of SlabberJockey that I use, though not the reversion in public release. I didn't bother packaging my later version up for release, because I knew Bill was adding this feature to his next release of Bugslabber.) But I make PMax slabs far more often than DMap slabs, and suspect that others probably do, too.

A nice thing about using a utility one has written personally is that when you need a new feature, you just go ahead and add it. So I intend to stick with SlabberJockey for my own work.

--Chris

[All Ex]

As a mater of fact MaxRockbin this (Andrea Hallgass’ SLABMAKER 1.3) was the program I was dealing with last night, before my reply to Chris. So far I`ve used all the above mentioned utilities, that is the reason I`m totally confused, I agree with Chris that, to my very little experience, PMax is a better method to perform ones stacks. I thing I`ll stick with the Blugslabber in the beginning and if I had the same problems (it was writing some gibberish characters on the count frame window) later on I`ll use the SLABMAKER 1.3. All that after I overcome my little problem with my gear.

Thanks very much,
Have a nice morning
(or whatever)

[MaxRockbin]

Bugslabber seems to be the most popular, so it makes sense to try and make that work.

I'm not sure what's up with the DMAP/PMAX issue with Slabmaker. It only does PMAX slabs for me.

Maybe it's the "Only Slabs" checkbox?
If I check that, I get only PMAX slabs.

If it is unchecked, in addtion to the PMAX slabs you specify with the inputs, you get full stacks processed for both PMAX & DMAP (just a minor convenience, so you don't have to run your full stacks manually)

[Chris S.]

I'm not sure what's up with the DMAP/PMAX issue with Slabmaker. It only does PMAX slabs for me.

Maybe it's the "Only Slabs" checkbox?

My bet is that the utility simply doesn't support making DMax slabs. SlabberJockey didn't originally do so either, until I added a few lines of code to give me the option of choosing between PMax and DMap. (This version has not been publicly released, as I feel that Bugslabber makes it obsolete for most people.) Bugslabber didn't do it at first, either, but Bill also added the capability.

Remembering that all any of these utilities do is create batch scripts that Zerene Stacker can run, and that such scripts can be written by hand in the first place, it's pretty easy to edit the output of a slabbing script to make DMap slabs instead of PMax slabs. For SlabberJockey outputs, here is the recipe:

• 1) Open the script with a text-editing program such as Notepad.
  2) Find and replace all occurrences of <TaskIndicatorCode value="4" /> with <TaskIndicatorCode value="5" />
  3) Find and replace all occurrences of <DepthMapControl.ContrastThresholdPercentile value="92.0" /> with <DepthMapControl.ContrastThresholdPercentile value="97.6" /> (But see note below.)
  4) Find and replace all occurrences of <DepthMapControl.UseFixedContrastThresholdPercentile value="false" /> with <DepthMapControl.UseFixedContrastThresholdPercentile value="true" />
  5) Save and close the script.
  
  Note: This assumes you want to use a contrast threshold of 97.6. For real-world use, substitute whatever value you actually want.

However, most of the time, most users probably should not make DMap slabs. Rather, they should make PMax slabs, then stack these slabs with either PMax, DMap, or both.

Hat's off to Zerene Stacker for doing the heavy lifting, and including a batch environment where so much function is accessible.

--Chris

[All Ex]

The only thing I could figure out so far is that Pmax is, us it seems to me, way Better slabbing method. At least that's the way I`m gonna start my efforts. I am not sure yet if DMAP has any "hidden" advantages on the retouching of the final image. Anyway that's an issue I`ll have to declare with experimentation. First of all I will have to maximize my stacks and then I would be able to jump in more accurate conclusions.
Thank you Max, for sharing your thoughts with me.
Talk you again in the future.

[Chris S.]

The only thing I could figure out so far is that Pmax is, us it seems to me, way Better slabbing method. At least that's the way I`m gonna start my efforts. I am not sure yet if DMAP has any "hidden" advantages on the retouching of the final image. Anyway that's an issue I`ll have to declare with experimentation. First of all I will have to maximize my stacks and then I would be able to jump in more accurate conclusions.

Alex, PMax is a good place to start--it's the easier of the two methods to learn to use. However, in time, you'll want to learn how to get the best out of DMap, as well. For some subjects, PMax is better; for others, DMap is better. For some situations, you'll want to use both, and combine the best aspects of the two in retouching. To learn to use DMap, you'll definitely want to watch the tutorials at the Zerene Systems Website.

But for now, there is nothing wrong with working just with PMax.

Cheers,

--Chris

[All Ex]

It seems that we`d posted at the same time with Chris. My post looks like much less advanced than yours Chris. Nice advice by the way although I am not use it (who knows, maybe for the moment).

[Chris S.]

. . . Pmax is. . .it seems to me, way Better slabbing method.

Alex, I just noticed that I'd misread you earlier. I'd thought you wrote "better stacking method" rather than "slabbing method, and responded accordingly. I do think that most of the time, PMax should be used to create the slabs. Stacking the slabs may be best done either PMax or DMap, or a combination of both.

A question for you: "What is it that you are looking to get out of slabbing?"

Slabbing is useful for some situations, such as very deep stacks (hundreds of images) or subjects with a lot of overlapping details where you want the retouching to be easier. (I could also name a few more esoteric situations.) But for the image you discussed at the beginning of the thread, you probably should not be slabbing.

Are you already comfortable with all other aspects of focus stacking, including image acquisition, use of Zerene Stacker, and other post processing? You definitely want to be, before you look into slabbing.

Cheers,

--Chris

[Chris S.]

Alex,

I've downloaded the Microsoft Access Runtime installation file and posted it--with a change in the file extension--to my Dropbox. You may be able to download it from there, even though you could not download it directly from Microsoft. Here is the link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/518 ... ntime.eeks

I changed the file extension from ".exe" to ".eeks", as an attempt to help you get it past your computer's protective software, which sometimes prevents a user from downloading anything with an "exe" extension. (This is because executable files often contain malware.)

In order to run this install, you will need to first rename its extension back to ".exe".

--Chris

[All Ex]

First of all I would like to thank you for the solution you gave me in order to be able to install Access runtime, I`ve already installed it. Later on I would create the necessary files in order to be able to run the program.

As for the real need to use slabbing in the future, I am almost certain that I`ll use it, because I intent to do some deep stacking (with lots of images), thus I`d be aimed of the compressed (in time) benefit that it would provide me. All that seems to be a little premature for the time being, but I`ve always believed that it is never that way if you are going to deal with such difficult issues, I know that in time I will meet some other problems (cleaning, relaxing, and generally dealing with speciments etc.) I would have to deal with, but I think it`s never a bad thing to look some steps ahead, I mean before you have to deal with the real problem, and find yourself in an awkward position.

After all it`s a learning situation, and that`s one of the main purposes of that site, correct me if I`m wrong.

Gooday Chris and to you all.

[Chris S.]

First of all I would like to thank you for the solution you gave me in order to be able to install Access runtime, I`ve already installed it. Later on I would create the necessary files in order to be able to run the program.

Yay! Glad it worked for you.

As for the real need to use slabbing in the future, I am almost certain that I`ll use it, because I intent to do some deep stacking (with lots of images), thus I`d be aimed of the compressed (in time) benefit that it would provide me. All that seems to be a little premature for the time being, but I've always believed that it is never that way if you are going to deal with such difficult issues, I know that in time I will meet some other problems (cleaning, relaxing, and generally dealing with specimens etc.) I would have to deal with, but I think it`s never a bad thing to look some steps ahead, I mean before you have to deal with the real problem, and find yourself in an awkward position.

Makes sense. I just wanted to make sure we weren't leading you in the wrong direction, encouraging difficult topics before simple ones were acquired.

After all it`s a learning situation, and that`s one of the main purposes of that site, correct me if I`m wrong.

Yes indeed, the site is for learning, teaching, and sharing. It's also a place for fellowship among a bunch of very friendly, commonly brilliant, constructively skeptical people from around the world who share common an interest in making images of small things.

We just wanted to make sure you were learning appropriatley to your needs.

Cheers,

--Chris