Moth wing

[JH]

Moth wing
This is a moth wing. I have used a Nikon BD Plan Apo 0.80 WD 0.7mm. There were some chromatic abberation that was treated in Canon DPP and some dust that I took care of in PS Camera Raw before stacking in Zerene. I took the pictures in RAW and worked with TIFF 16 bit files. In this case the initial JPG stack looks awful compared with the final outcome.

Regards Jörgen

[rjlittlefield]

Looks very nice!

I took the pictures in RAW and worked with TIFF 16 bit files. In this case the initial JPG stack looks awful compared with the final outcome.

Can you say a few more words about this? What was the nature of "awful", and why was JPG involved at all?

From your description I would have guessed a full 16-bit TIFF workflow. Did you actually shoot raw+JPG and make a trial run first from the JPGs?

--Rik

[carlos.uruguay]

[JH]

Thanks Rik and Carlos!

Can you say a few more words about this? What was the nature of "awful", and why was JPG involved at all?

From your description I would have guessed a full 16-bit TIFF workflow. Did you actually shoot raw+JPG and make a trial run first from the JPGs?

--Rik

Yes I usually shoot raw+jpg. I let Zerene stack the jpg:s instantly so I can see if the stack turns out all right. At a couple of times I have had a corrupt raw-file and have been able to use a single jpeg as rescue.

Sometimes the first stack with jpegs is just fine but usually I do something with the raw files and then convert them to 16 bit tiff.

Crop of first jpg stack. No adjustments.


Crop of final picture. Less CA, dust and halos.



The original picture is FF. The magnification on sensor is 100x (40x lens and 2.5x photo relay lens)

Regards Jörgen

[rjlittlefield]

Thank you for the additional info & images.

A lot of the problems I see in the first image look like PMax artifacts, such as "streamers" from those bright tips and generally more noise, contrast, and broad halos.

So I'm struggling a bit to tease apart how much of the improvement was made because of 16-bit TIFF versus JPEG, compared to DMap vs PMax and what I presume is some retouching.

Can you say a few more words about those aspects?

--Rik

[JH]

A lot of the problems I see in the first image look like PMax artifacts, such as "streamers" from those bright tips and generally more noise, contrast, and broad halos.

So I'm struggling a bit to tease apart how much of the improvement was made because of 16-bit TIFF versus JPEG, compared to DMap vs PMax and what I presume is some retouching.

Can you say a few more words about those aspects?

--Rik

This is a short description of the workflow for this picture. Most of my choises are based on taste.

For a while I have been thinking about making an artistic high magnification picture of a butterfly wing. The best lens I have for this purpose is the 40x BD plan apo. But the WD is so short so there is not much room for light adjustments. The best option turned out to be to use BD light. I moved the mirror a few mm to get some direction of light. The single pictures have some CA.

Working with the jpeg:s in Canon DPP did not help me to get rid of enough of the CA



The result was better with the RAW-files.



Most of the times when i stack high magnification pictures from the microscope I have turned of all alignments. This makes it easier to move picture/slabs etc from one project to the next and there are no spot-trails in the stacked pictures.

Dmap looked better than Pmax.

PMax no alignments





Dmap no alignments




After some late night pixel peeping I thougt that the standard settings was (marginally better) so I used the standard settings.

Dmap standard settings



Removed almost all of the dust in Camera Raw before stacking in Zerene. Used the Dmap as a base, retouching in details near borders from Pmax. Removed some dust and halos in PS.

Regards Jörgen

[rjlittlefield]

Great, thanks for the additional information.

--Rik

[JH]

Great, thanks for the additional information.

--Rik

Thanks for the questions, was a good excercise to reread my notes and evaluate my decisions.

As you are the programmer of Zerene it would be interesting to read your thoughts - in a new thread - about what processing is best done before stacking and what processing is best done after stacking.

Regards Jörgen