I've more or less got my head round CombineZP's interesting GUI.
So now I "just" want to stack stuff, for which CZPBatch seems ideal (literally made for the job).
But there's a problem. The easiest way to use CombineZP is to simply pick "All Methods" from the macro menu.
This Aligns and Balances the Used Frames, and then runs each and every Stacking method, resulting in multiple outputs from which to choose.
Once you've found which particular stacking method suits your current shooting subject, you would not use "All Methods".
You would need to run Align and Balance first, and then run the stacking macro of your choice.
This is (of course) quicker than running All Methods, but it does involve running 2 macros ("align", "chosen stack method") as opposed to a single macro ("All Methods").
So far, so good.
But the Batch engine appears to only be able to run a single macro, so (unless I learnt enough to create my own macros), I'm stuck with "All Methods".
Unless someone can help me.
BugBear
Macro for use with CombineZPBatch?
Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau
Careful reading of the help page (!!) shows that one can also invoke CombineZP from the command line, which suits my scripting style nicely, as well as the provided Batch program.
On further reading, I found that macros can call other macros; I was going to add a new macro, but there appears to be a limit of 10, and the default set already had 10.
I therefore re-used slot 4 (which was a stacking method I wasn't going to use) and added a call to the "Thorough" align method, and a call to one of the Pyramid stacking methods.
A bit of diligent editing (with more care than understanding) got me a 3 step macro, effectively cut down (massively) from "All Methods" which works.
I now have a perl script which make a tmp directory, hard-links all the command line given image files into it (this is the required mode of operation for CombineZP command line use), runs CombineZP, and then tidies away the hard link files and tmp directory, leaving just the output.
I LOVE UNIX!!
BugBear
On further reading, I found that macros can call other macros; I was going to add a new macro, but there appears to be a limit of 10, and the default set already had 10.
I therefore re-used slot 4 (which was a stacking method I wasn't going to use) and added a call to the "Thorough" align method, and a call to one of the Pyramid stacking methods.
A bit of diligent editing (with more care than understanding) got me a 3 step macro, effectively cut down (massively) from "All Methods" which works.
I now have a perl script which make a tmp directory, hard-links all the command line given image files into it (this is the required mode of operation for CombineZP command line use), runs CombineZP, and then tidies away the hard link files and tmp directory, leaving just the output.
I LOVE UNIX!!
BugBear