Can you batch slab using Zerene?

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UncleChip
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Can you batch slab using Zerene?

Post by UncleChip »

Jumping in on this thread, can you batch slab in Zerene?

rjlittlefield
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Re: Is Zerene Now Using All CPUs?

Post by rjlittlefield »

UncleChip wrote:
Mon Mar 06, 2023 10:44 am
Jumping in on this thread, can you batch slab in Zerene?
This question would be better as a separate thread. I will make that happen after you've had a chance to see this reply.

I expect that you're asking whether it is possible to point Zerene Stacker to an arbitrary collection of folders and say "slab all of these".

In general, the answer to that question is No. That feature, and several other related features, is on the list for future development. However, that list is long and progress is slow, so for everyone's sanity I do not predict when, if ever, anything on it might get implemented.

In the special case that all stacks you want to process have exactly the same length, then it is possible to generate the slabbing script for one stack and apply that script to a collection of stacks. To do that, one recipe is as follows:
  1. Launch Zerene Stacker.
  2. Load all files for one of the stacks.
  3. Batch > Slabbing
  4. At "How to save output images", select an appropriate option. (I am fond of "Save in {project}/SavedImages".)
  5. Click OK to generate the script and open the Batch Dialog
  6. Under "options to save new projects", select one of the "Save" options.
  7. In the Queued Batches area, select the one batch.
  8. in the "Projects & Image Folders" area, select %CurrentProject% and click "Delete" to remove that entry.
  9. Close Dialog
  10. File > Close Project
  11. Batch > Show Batch Dialog
  12. Drag all folders to be processed, into the batch dialog folders area.
  13. Run All Batches
I hope this helps!

--Rik

UncleChip
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Re: Is Zerene Now Using All CPUs?

Post by UncleChip »

RiK
Re the slabbing
1, If you are to add all the files to one project won’t it try to align the images from different sets?
2, in slabbing how will it ignore images from one set to the next with the overlapping?
3, in creating equal sets, could you add pure white images to make up the numbers, or would you be better duplicating images?

rjlittlefield
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Re: Is Zerene Now Using All CPUs?

Post by rjlittlefield »

rjlittlefield wrote:
Mon Mar 06, 2023 11:51 am
This question would be better as a separate thread. I will make that happen after you've had a chance to see this reply.
Just to confirm, I split this thread into into its own forum topic, rather than leaving it interleaved with a different discussion.

UncleChip wrote:
Tue Mar 07, 2023 9:38 am
RiK
Re the slabbing
1, If you are to add all the files to one project won’t it try to align the images from different sets?
2, in slabbing how will it ignore images from one set to the next with the overlapping?
Different stacks never go in the same project.

In Zerene Stacker, whenever you want to batch process multiple stacks, you first have to move (or copy) each stack to its own separate folder.

It is the folder structure that keeps the stacks separate. Then the batch recipe that I described creates a separate project for each of the stacks/folders.

See https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker/docs/howtouseit#batch_processing for more discussion of this aspect.

3, in creating equal sets, could you add pure white images to make up the numbers, or would you be better duplicating images?
It would definitely be better to duplicate images. Pure white would wreak havoc with most combinations of settings.

Note that images are sorted by name when each project is created, so the duplicates should be named to fit in that sequence.

--Rik

UncleChip
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Re: Can you batch slab using Zerene?

Post by UncleChip »

Thx Rik
The slabbing feature is new to me, and I am impressed so you can have a =D> =D> for this feature, I will have a plat at batch stitching and thx for the guidance,

The stereo image is an interesting feature, I am not sure of its application as I couldn’t grasp how you view it, I have saved the talk you did with Alan so no doubt all will become clear when I watch it.

Steve

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Re: Can you batch slab using Zerene?

Post by rjlittlefield »

UncleChip wrote:
Tue Mar 07, 2023 4:30 pm
The stereo image is an interesting feature, I am not sure of its application as I couldn’t grasp how you view it
If you have a viewer, it's pretty straightforward.

If you don't, then you'll have to learn cross-eye viewing. That's not so simple, but there are lots of articles on the internet. Just do a Google search on how to view cross-eye stereogram.

--Rik

lothman
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Re: Can you batch slab using Zerene?

Post by lothman »

rjlittlefield wrote:
Tue Mar 07, 2023 6:55 pm
If you have a viewer, it's pretty straightforward.

If you don't, then you'll have to learn cross-eye viewing. That's not so simple, but there are lots of articles on the internet. Just do a Google search on how to view cross-eye stereogram.

--Rik
Just a question for the stereo view, if I have a stack of let us say 150 frames and I made 15 slabs. Are the 15 slabs enough to achieve a good 3D stereo view?

I use a Sony A7rv and the files are big, so creating a stereo-pair from original files (150 stack) takes long time. But downscaling the slabs would be faster. Or is there another trick I'm not aware of.

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Re: Can you batch slab using Zerene?

Post by rjlittlefield »

lothman wrote:
Wed Mar 08, 2023 5:24 am
Just a question for the stereo view, if I have a stack of let us say 150 frames and I made 15 slabs. Are the 15 slabs enough to achieve a good 3D stereo view?

I use a Sony A7rv and the files are big, so creating a stereo-pair from original files (150 stack) takes long time. But downscaling the slabs would be faster. Or is there another trick I'm not aware of.
To address the cost of generating stereo, I suggest to first consider what you need in the final result. In many cases the most effective approach is to use Options > Preferences > Preprocessing > "Image Pre-sizing", "Stack every N'th frame", and possibly "Image Pre-cropping" to reduce the total number of pixels that get stacked. When starting with deep high resolution stacks, I often pre-size to 50% and stack every 2nd frame. This reduces the pixel count by 8X, and in most cases still leaves me with more than enough pixels and depth planes to meet my needs.

It is certainly possible to generate stereo from a collection of mono slabs, but as the number of slabs decreases you become more vulnerable to layer separation in the final stereo. With only 15 mono slabs, your stereo view will have only 15 depth planes. That may look OK at first glance or when displayed very small, but when you look closely the result will surely look like your subject was painted onto 15 planes that have obvious gaps between them. Those gaps are what I mean by "layer separation".

There is a productive way to combine slabbing and stereo, but mostly for the purpose of retouching, not cost-reduction. In this method, you generate two sets of slabs, one set for each eye, using the appropriate stereo shift for each set of slabs. Then you Stack Selected to combine the first-eye slabs making a first-eye final, and likewise for the second eye view. Finally you retouch the first-eye final from the first-eye slabs, and the second-eye final from the second-eye slabs.

I developed this method only in the last few weeks so I am still getting used to it, but I am liking it a lot for retouching transparent foreground in subjects that are too complicated to use targeted stack-selected as described at https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker/d ... foreground .

This technique is discussed in the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSd8OlkUqss , "Advanced Stereo Image Stacking - A discussion with Rik Littlefield" on the Allan Walls Photography channel. This is the talk with Allan that UncleChip mentions. The video is quite long, a little over 2 hours, but if you're good at conversational English it can be watched faster, say at 1.5 or 1.75 speed.

There is not yet any written documentation on the technique, but that is high on my priority list.

--Rik

UncleChip
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Re: Can you batch slab using Zerene?

Post by UncleChip »

Stereo images = mind blown


I found your older threads where you compare true stereo to generated from stacks, they where identical to me, and I am amazed at the effect, feel like a child seeing a kaleidoscope for the first time

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