Stacking in CS4??

garyt

Tempurature was 38 degrees yesterday and the wind was howling. I found this miner bee on the picnic table trying to warm up. After taking a couple of shots of it, I noticed that it really didn't spook from that flash, so I took a series of shots to try and stack in CS4. I usually use Combine, but have alot of trouble hand stacking more that a couple of shots, so after reading some about doing it in CS4, I thought I'd give it a try. Here's a couple of single shots (not stacked)





And now for the fun part. I found that I didn't have enough RAM to stack this first shot from 12 pictures, so I ended up stacking four at a time and then stacking those together. Once I figured out the process, it wasn't too bad. I already know that they are not perfect, but I was looking for input on how you thought the process worked. I already have my own thoughts and ideas. Please feel free to comment. This shot is stacked from 12 pictures.



And this one is from six shots. I was able to do this one in a single pass.



Please comment on how you think these worked compared to Combine. Thanks

GOLDENORFE

good shots Gary, i nearly got a shot of the white wiskered one yesterday:cry
what apperture are they shot at?
would have thought 3-4 frames @ f11-f14 would cover whole bee.
some frames might have same focus plane!
phil

garyt

GOLDENORFE wrote:

good shots Gary, i nearly got a shot of the white wiskered one yesterday:cry
what apperture are they shot at?
would have thought 3-4 frames @ f11-f14 would cover whole bee.
some frames might have same focus plane!
phil

Thanks Phil. These were shot at f8. That's what I normally shoot. I wanted to test the CS4 stacking program, so I took a bunch of shots. Granted a higher f-stop probably would have meant fewer pictures, but this was about testing CS4, and seeing what it did against CombineZM. I usually don't stack too many shots, but it was a crappy day and I had time to play. I did move slightly on each frame.

canon400d

garyt wrote:

Thanks Phil. These were shot at f8. That's what I normally shoot. I wanted to test the CS4 stacking program, so I took a bunch of shots. Granted a higher f-stop probably would have meant fewer pictures, but this was about testing CS4, and seeing what it did against CombineZM. I usually don't stack too many shots, but it was a crappy day and I had time to play. I did move slightly on each frame.

Hi Gary,
Where is the Stacking on CS4?
Regards
Bob

garyt

canon400d wrote:

Hi Gary,
Where is the Stacking on CS4?
Regards
Bob

Hi Bob,
There may be a better way (this was my first attempt in CS4), but this is what I did.
File=>Scripts=>Load images into stack. then choose "browse" and load the files you want to stack. Be sure to check the box for auto-align or you will have to do it later (Edit=>Auto-align images). This loads each image onto a separate layer, and aligns them all. Then it's simply Edit=>Auto-blend layers. It's not as fast as Combine (and it does take up a lot of RAM if you have a lot of images), but it seems to work fairly well, at least so far. I'll have to try another couple before i pass judgement. Hope this helps. Good luck!

Lord Vetinari

Lovely series. The stacks look pretty good- miner bees are very hard to stack well with waving antennae and all that hair. Suspect they may have less artifacts than a combine stack. I know I spent so long repairing a stack of one of these from combine that I tend to find it faster to do them by hand.

Brian v.

canon400d

Lord Vetinari wrote:

Lovely series. The stacks look pretty good- miner bees are very hard to stack well with waving antennae and all that hair. Suspect they may have less artifacts than a combine stack. I know I spent so long repairing a stack of one of these from combine that I tend to find it faster to do them by hand.

Brian v.

Hi Gary,
Thanks that was very useful indeed I will certainly have a look at it. I have used CombineZM but I have currently on trial Helicon Focus for stacking and it is really good so that is something for you to look at.
Regards
Bob