Photostacking using Photoshop.

[DaveW]

See:-

http://www.plantpath.cornell.edu/PhotoL ... oFocus.htm

DaveW

[rjlittlefield]

I wonder what the date is on this. I hope it's not current, given the quality and ease of use that Helicon Focus, CombineZM, et.al. now provide.

The Broad-nosed Weevil picture that it links to says © 2004.

That makes sense, because in 2004 available software was not very good.

--Rik

[Adrian]

the few images ive stacked ive took simular approch, the way i did it was combine images into layers, and use the softest eraser (hardness 0%), to get rid of the (no focus area's)

[rjlittlefield]

I've posted a few manual stacks in recent months too. Pure manual stacking still makes great sense in some cases. Offhand I can think of these:

• You want to combine a very few images once in a while, and it's not worth installing and learning the software.
• The subject moved.
• The images were shot from slightly different viewpoints.
• You have a type of subject that software doesn't handle well.

My concern with the particular page that Dave linked to is that none of these conditions apply. It specifically mentions things like "a sedentary subject", "a vibration free work area", and "all the equipment necessary". It shows the camera mounted on a tripod, on a focusing rail. The subjects that it shows and links to would be handled very well by many software packages (including Helicon Focus and CombineZM). In fact, those subjects would probably be handled a lot better by software than by hand, simply because it makes possible to use a lot more frames.

If this were just some Joe Commoner's page, it wouldn't bother me much, but this particular page is published by the Photo Lab of the Department of Plant Pathology at Cornell University. If you click the Home link, you get beamed to a home page that adds "A technical and artistic resource for scientific photography in the digital age." The page about manual stacking is linked from the page titled "Digital Photo Tips", and there's no mention on that page about stacking software.

What strikes me as odd is the combination of 1) a source that is highly respected and normally quite reliable, 2) an appearance that suggests professional advice, and 3) seriously outdated and incomplete information.

It's telling to note that the Picture of the Month at the same site is clearly described as 40 images processed through Helicon Focus. Those images, it says, "were made at slightly different focal depths as described in this article" -- and the article that it points to is the one we're discussing, that does not mention software.

Bottom line, it seems pretty clear that the page Dave linked to has just been overcome by events and gotten outdated. Most likely nobody at the site has even noticed. They'd probably like to know -- I'll tickle their webmaster.

--Rik