Affinity Photo - focus merge for field macro stacks

Images of undisturbed subjects in their natural environment. All subject types.

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Beatsy
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Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Affinity Photo - focus merge for field macro stacks

Post by Beatsy »

When Adobe brought in subscriptions I immediately searched for alternative photography tools so I could dump Photoshop and Lightroom. I'm definitely not going to rent my software - ever! I ended up switching to Affinity Photo as a replacement for Photoshop and have used it daily for a year now. It's as full-featured as PS with lots of functions I've still not tried out. One of these was 'focus merge', but I finally got around to tinkering with it in the past couple of days.

I have to say, I am super-impressed! It's ridiculously simple to use, just select the pictures you want to include and press OK. No parameters or settings to tweak, it generates the final output completely automatically.

The attached picture used 6 source images captured with a Sony 90mm f/2.8 macro on A7rii. I had the camera on a tripod and turned the focus ring a little for each shot - waiting for the wind to die down before pressing the shutter. Manual exposure settings were 1/60th, f/9, ISO 200 and daylight white-balance, The flower was shaded from direct sunlight but the light did vary very slightly as the sequence was captured (variable, hazy cloud covering the sun).

Macro lenses like the Sony 90mm produce a lot of focus-breathing, so the size of the flower was appreciably different in each image, and in slightly different positions due to movement in the breeze. I honestly thought the focus merge would fail dismally - but it didn't. A perfect stack straight out of the gate. No ghosts, no transparency issues, and (slight) exposure variations perfectly smoothed. Edit: I should qualify that to say "for this kind of picture". If you try to make everything sharp right through a deep stack, there will be halos around high contrast, overlapping areas - a bit like DMap does, but they are smoothed a little more.

Obviously Zerene remains the king for (deep) studio stacks - but I *highly* recommend Affinity for these short sequences taken in the field (or studio). It costs around £50, or less, with free lifetime upgrades too - what's not to like?! (I have no affiliation etc etc blah blah blah).

Image

[Note to mods - this may belong in techniques, but I put it here because of it's relevance to field macro and handheld/tripod stacking. Pls move it if you think it's more appropriate somewhere else. I'll delete this note in a couple of days if it hasn't moved]
Last edited by Beatsy on Thu Jun 28, 2018 3:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

vendav
Posts: 76
Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:56 am

Alternatives to PS & LR

Post by vendav »

Hi Beatsy,

Thanks for that, I too am refusing to bow down to Adobe's subscription only policy.
I have Affinity but was wondering, what do you use to replace LR's cataloguing
facility.
Also, have you, and if so, how have you, saved your developed LR images?

I beg of you, please keep your answers simple, I'm a computer user, I don't know what goes on under the bonnet!

Kind regards,
David

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Re: Alternatives to PS & LR

Post by Beatsy »

vendav wrote: I have Affinity but was wondering, what do you use to replace LR's cataloguing
facility. Also, have you, and if so, how have you, saved your developed LR images?
I switched to Capture One for Sony (now on V11). It's got a heck of a learning curve, but now I've got to grips with it, I think it's much better than Lightroom in almost every regard. The "for Sony" version is only £80 (two installations allowed), but for any (other) camera model(s) you're looking at £300-ish.

I still have LR4 and CS6 for "legacy stuff" (and the Blurb book editor in LR which I occasionally use to make cheaper wedding albums).

vendav
Posts: 76
Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:56 am

Post by vendav »

Thanks, I'll have a look at Capture One but I'm a Canon user and £300-ish is a bit steep for me. Also "a heck of a learning curve" is a bit off-putting but who knows?

Kind regards,
David

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Post by Beatsy »

Since my first post, I found Affinity has a retouching mechanism too. All the scaled and aligned source images are made available in a "sources" tab. Each source image can be selected individually and parts painted into the output with the clone brush. It would be a pain for deep stacks with very shallow depth of field - but for stopped down, short stacks like this, it's fine. Now I just need to get better at capturing handheld stacks in the field...

vendav
Posts: 76
Joined: Thu Jul 31, 2008 2:56 am

Post by vendav »

I really must invest some time in exploring "Affinity" more thoroughly.

I have been a LR user right from its inception - a Beta user many years ago - and felt that I had just about mastered it so it's a bit of a bugger to have to start all over again; but perhaps that's what Adobe are banking on!

Kind regards,
David

Chris S.
Site Admin
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Re: Affinity Photo - focus merge for field macro stacks

Post by Chris S. »

Capital image, Steve! Just lovely. Thanks both for posting it and writing about the techniques you used to create it. This is very useful; but I might quibble about what portion of the form each element might have most impact.

For the image itself, I think that it definitely belongs in our galleries.
Beatsy wrote:[Note to mods - this may belong in techniques, but I put it here because of it's relevance to field macro and handheld/tripod stacking. Pls move it if you think it's more appropriate somewhere else. I'll delete this note in a couple of days if it hasn't moved]
Must confess that personally, while I quite like seeing this image in a gallery, I'd prefer to see your discussion of the techniques you used to create it--Affinity Photo, et al--in the "Macro and Micro Technique and Technical Discussions" section of the forum. For best understanding, each post could refer to the other, I prefer this approach so that people most interested in images can simply see images, while people most interested in techniques can see techniques that explain images; to my mind, our current divisions support these disparate interest reasonably well--though likely not perfectly (this a subject on which I'd welcome feedback and honest discussion.

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Post by Beatsy »

Thanks for your comments Chris. When I first posted, the emphasis was meant to be the picture, but I included the Affinity info as a "hook" into stacking for those who might usually only consider straight shots when capturing images in the field.

Of course, I rambled on more than I intended - and the emphasis had shifted to the technique by the time I finished typing (hence my note to mods). So I think it really belongs in techniques too.

With regard to feedback/discussion: although this one was entirely of my doing, it's often the case that images posted in galleries attract questions on technique or equipment. Those can balloon into long, detailed discussions at times. I've seen threads split by the mods before now, which works well IMO, but I'm sure you have enough to do without formally taking that on as a regular "duty". But other than that, I can't think of any catch-all solution. Personally, I'll always post to techniques (from here on) if I include *any* relevant content in the associated text (like this post). Only pictures (with comment on the subject itself) will go to galleries. But that still leaves the gallery posts that mutate into techniques or other issues with discussion over time - like this thread is now doing (again) :D

Andy
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2018 12:15 pm
Location: Derby UK

Post by Andy »

By Ek Steve, I knew I was going to like this website; a break from the norm. Affinity from nearby Nottingham used to be Serif PhotoPlus which I have used for many years in various revision letters and numbers. It is so blindingly simple. They are nice people and recently gave me the serial code to install an old copy. Unfortunately (or not) I have given up on the major operating system and now use a version of Linux open source Ubuntu. This is lightening fast but have had to learn GIMP as an alternative to PhotoPlus though I have managed to install PhotoPlus onto this op system in case I get stuck. Nearly all software is free on Ubuntu as is GIMP. Must go now to see if I can find merge! Just love that image that you and Affinity have created. The tonal qualities are so pleasing - thanks.
AndyM

tpe
Posts: 478
Joined: Sun Aug 26, 2007 4:07 am
Location: Copenhagen Denmark

Post by tpe »

Many thanks for the explanation, and the headsup about affinity, i will have to have a look at that. I also use an A7ii, and prefer Ubuntu, so very useful. I must admit i do not like the view finder too much on the sony, it does not work great at full magnification in bad lighting, too much of a slide show and too much noise so my in focus hit rate went right down. Now i have a ring light attached for focusing and a macro twin flash for main lighting, but it is not optimal for insects as the light can put them off...

Sorry digressing, that is a great shot and very useful field stacking info...

Tim

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