#FILE TYPES HELICON FOCUS SOFTWARE#

I also found in practice that they give not necessarily better results but different results and some renders appeal more to a photographers style than others and it’s worth trying all three with an image to see which you like best, one of the neat features is that in the output panel it stores the outputs so you flip between before deciding which one you like. All three have there uses and should render better results with different types of image. But briefly there are three rendering methods, weighted average, depth map and pyramid. Im not going to get technical as there some great tool tips that pop when using the software, and very straight forward videos, and tutorials on the HeliconSoft Website. However Helicon Focus has a few more features worth mentioning before we close the image down. It is possible at this stage to click on the render button and you are finished bar saving the final image. Now I know the process for this I will make sure in the future that I mark the beginning and end of each sequence at the taking stage, and only advance the focus ring in one direction, my original experiments with Focus stacking are a little chaotic, a more methodical and planned approach will yield far superior results. All the images on this page were done in this way.īut let not be too hasty! The first step is to select the images that you have captured and load them into Helicon Focus, I did this using two methods dragging and dropping straight from the Adobe Bridge screen, and also using the file open command within Helicon Focus, both worked well. However Helicon Focus has a great feature it has a RAW in DNG out mode, so it is possible to run the raw files through Helicon Focus then work on the DNG file with the raw converter and then continue with my normal workflow. I always aim to minimise the editing steps staying as close to the RAW file as possible until I need to make the finishing touches, a such I do most of the basic editing with the RAW converter, including monochrome conversion, and then save the localised adjustments for photoshop and Nik software, I was concerned that adding another step would degrade the image.

#FILE TYPES HELICON FOCUS SOFTWARE#

And it also came with a recommendation from another well known photographer working in same genre of photography as myself.įor a piece of software to be successful for me it not only has work well but also adapt and fit into my workflow.

Although it is standalone it can export and import images from Lightroom with ease, a feature I have not tested as I am not a Lightroom user. Helicon Focus is a standalone piece of software dedicated to focus stacking and as such it has a better refined algorithm for blending the images, and some very useful features. And I didn't bother trying with any of the others. So at the time I abandoned the process and settled for the best I could from an image shot at F16, I ditched some of the foreground. CS6 did a great job, but on close inspection there were small issues areas that were not sharp, and strange effects where bits of sand and grit had been duplicated. I had taken a number of frames all gradually moving the focus point in each image then blending them together to create one sharp image containing all the detail that I wanted to capture. The two portrait photographs in this article (above) were first attempted in Photoshop CS6. And as I sat and listened to the presentation I realised that this beautiful and simple piece of software could provide the answer to some problems I had recently had with some images I was working on. Helicon Focus is produced by HeliconSoft, a company that I had not heard of until a few months ago.

File types helicon focus