Is it ok to edit before staking?

A forum to ask questions, post setups, and generally discuss anything having to do with photomacrography and photomicroscopy.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

Yawns
Posts: 400
Joined: Sun Dec 20, 2015 9:18 am
Location: Benavente, Portugal

Is it ok to edit before staking?

Post by Yawns »

apparently it is...

Just tried this ...
after shooting all the frames (*.NEF)
opened all of them with Capture NX-D (the software provided by Nikon .. in my opinion far better than Adobe Camera Raw to process Nikon's RAW images)
made adjustments in some of the frames..noise reduction, sharpness, contrast, exposure, chroma, color lightness ...
everytime I adjusted one frame copied and pasted the changes to all the remaining ones.
Exported to TIFF 16-bits and stacked ..

I like it. and did not have to do a lot of edition after.. only removed debris and adjusted the Black and the White ...

Blowfly
Lomo 3,7
Pure linen fabric for diffuser
5 led lamps in a pentagon.

Both pictures expand to full-size on Flick
The "baked" .. file

ImageStraight from Zerene software.. unedited and unclean. Sorry by antonio caseiro, on Flickr

The final one.

Image2018-03-26 01-45-27 (C) edit by antonio caseiro, on Flickr
YAWNS _ (Y)et (A)nother (W)onderful (N)ewbie (S)hooting

Chris S.
Site Admin
Posts: 4042
Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 9:55 pm
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: Is it ok to edit before staking?

Post by Chris S. »

Antonio,
Yawns wrote:. . .opened all of them with Capture NX-D (the software provided by Nikon .. in my opinion far better than Adobe Camera Raw to process Nikon's RAW images)
My sense is also that Nikon does a much better job than Adobe in processing Nikon raw files. However, I haven't tested Adobe Camera Raw in several years.

One task I didn't see in your list is "clone out sensor dust." This is something I also find useful to do during raw conversion.
Yawns wrote:. . . I adjusted one frame copied and pasted the changes to all the remaining ones.
Have you tried Nikon Capture NX-D's batch capability? It works quite well for this task.

--Chris S.

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
Posts: 23561
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
Contact:

Post by rjlittlefield »

Antonio, it sounds to me like what you did is actually the standard recommendation for handling raw files with Zerene Stacker.

When asked, I always recommend to adjust the contrast, colors, sharpness, etc, so as to get the developed images looking close to how you want the output. Just be sure to leave the contrast low enough to allow for contrast increase by PMax, and be sure not to over-sharpen or use too much noise reduction because those mistakes cannot be corrected without completely reprocessing the stack.

--Rik

Smokedaddy
Posts: 1951
Joined: Sat Oct 07, 2006 10:16 am
Location: Bigfork, Montana
Contact:

Post by Smokedaddy »

... not that I'm the expert but that's how I do it but I use Photoshop CC > Scripts > Image processor then manipulate the image as I see fit and it batch process the changes I want to make, then generates the TIF(s).

Image

Image

-JW:

Deanimator
Posts: 870
Joined: Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:01 pm
Location: North Olmsted, Ohio, U.S.A.

Post by Deanimator »

I almost always edit my RAW files before running them through Zerene.

I import them into Elements where I make adjustments to exposure, contrast, and sharpness. I then export them as TIFFs which get run through Zerene.

Lou Jost
Posts: 5942
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:03 am
Location: Ecuador
Contact:

Post by Lou Jost »

I often stack with the unprocessed jpgs and then, for the best few stacks, edit the corresponding RAW files as a batch job in Photoshop and stack those, taking care not to sharpen much. Batch conversion of RAW files is slow, so I like to know ahead of time if the stack merits the extra time.

Yawns
Posts: 400
Joined: Sun Dec 20, 2015 9:18 am
Location: Benavente, Portugal

Post by Yawns »

:? I'm not sure if I understand how the "quote" thing works....

@ Chris . S.perhaps the guys who developed Capture Nx-D have access to what's under the bonnet in Nikon cameras ... and third parts have to guess or reverse the code etc ... but since I start to use Capture NX-D instead of Ad Camera Raw I never got posterization in the soft backgrounds, halos, added noise etc... everything is a lot more "elastic" ..

I need to have a look at that "clone out sensor dust" .. at the moment I don't know what is :D (will be fixed soon)

@ Thank you Rik . Good to now I'm going the good way and I wasn't aware of the concrete risks ... I will take care in the future...

@ the rest of you who were kind to reply..

I'm sorry if I gave the impression the copy-paste task is an hard job ...
In fact it is very easy .. after adjusting one frame I only have to copy the updated settings (menu) .. then Alt+A (select all) and then Cmd+Shift+V to past .. or .. if i select all the pictures first .. when I work on one frame all the other frames update in realtime
it's easy and no hard work at all.

@ Lou jost .. like you, recently I started to shoot/save always RAW + JPG .. then I immediately stack the JPGS unprocessed (it's very quick) only to check if there are some major problems making the oicture useless.

I only go through the long process of editing, exporting, stacking... if the picture is worth of all the trouble.
YAWNS _ (Y)et (A)nother (W)onderful (N)ewbie (S)hooting

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic