Open source focus stacking software

Of course, using window light for multiple shots requing the same exposure was risky as the strength of sunlight can change rapidly, but the sky was heavily overcast so I figured fluctuations would be minimal. Connecting camera to laptop via USB cable, I booted up a nifty bit of software called Digicamcontrol. This open source tethering program has focus stacking functionality built in. I could have tried manual focussing to create a series of shots with small, consistent adjustments in focus, but Digicamcontrol simplified the process.

If you did not follow the link, it essentially describes the process of setting the parameters required to generate component images for the stack:. Specifying the near and far focus points was relatively straightforward. For the shot interval I selected 1 second, but that value would have been higher had I been using flash.

Once Digicamcontrol had instructed the camera to fire off the 11 shots I switched to Adobe Bridge and loaded the first image into Adobe Camera Raw.

The first image shot was loaded into Photoshop CS6 , then each subsequent shot was opened in the order the images were shot and copied to a new layer in the first file. So the final result is a combination of best focused and exposed portions of the images added.

The algorithm implied here works pretty well and gives awesome result every time. It does not have a GUI and you will have to use certain set of commands to carry out the focus stacking process. If you are really not comfortable with carrying out command line operations, you can download PTAssembler , which is an image stitching software; TuFuse comes along with it and it serves as a GUI for TFuse.

To carryout these operations, you need to add special codes along with the above line of code. The list of codes can be found on the homepage of this software. ImageJ is a multiplatform image processing software that can perform focus stacking for free.

It is an open source focus stacking software that runs on Java. The feature to stack photos does not comes inbuit but is available as a plugin. The Plugin page of this software has a very vast list of plugins that can be used to manipulate photos; one of them is Stack Focuser.

Download the plugin, copy the downloaded file, and paste it in the Plugins folder of ImageJ. Now to stack images, open the software and load the images to be stacked, one by one. This turns all the open images into one stack.

Now go to Plugins tab, then click on Stack Focuser. A small dialog box opens, click Ok. Your image stack is processed to create a new focus stacked output.

Save the image as tif, gif, jpg, png, bmp , etc. As long as I am using this setup without major modifications, it is sufficient to create the corresponding grey card image only once. File deadpixels. By default, the script will use the central 0. This scripts utilizes the prior information from Deadpixels. One can be even more specific, and specify a particular range of continuously numbered images this is very convenient if, as I like to do, the first image in the stack is always a dark frame, and the last one is a gray card photo, for white balance computations , like in this example:.

If you ran the prior command Deadpixels. Most of the time this is a very bad idea, as the first image in the stack usually has few or no sharp features. The middle image is usually well framed much better than either the first or the last image in a stack , so this approach minimizes the frame waste due to misalignments of the stack images.

The script Align. One can always edit the alpha channel of individual stack images if needed, to remove certain areas from the following focus stacking stage. One can use open source image editor Gimp for that. Google for "gimp 2. The Windows 2. A warning: if something goes wrong and you interrupt Align. The script takes no command line arguments. The processing time is OK, but this depends on the size of the source images. Larger source images take longer to render. Try Photoshop for Free.

ON1 Photo RAW is the latest version of this graphics editing software has many improvements, including performance. It also features an extensive focus stacking process. The focus stacking feature is not immediately noticeable, but it can be found on the right-hand side of the editing toolbar. As with the other programs, the process is simple and you can change different features of the focus stacking process too.

The quality of the final result is more than acceptable. If you want the best quality, consider using more than 3 source images, and use a tripod to ensure the compositions are aligned perfectly. Try ON1 30 Days for Free. Helicon is a fantastic, advanced, free-to-try program but expensive to buy focus stacking software. Full functionality for focus stacking is available in the trial and you can save merged images without watermarks or copyright notices.

Once you are ready to buy, there are several Helicon Focus price options to choose from. You can buy the lifetime license with free updates or one-year license:. This program is simple to use and has a no-nonsense approach. The central pane contains previews of the source images, and the final composite when it is finished.

The right pane contains details of source images and the controls for the focus stacking process. Although the basic process is simple, there is a host of advanced controls you can utilize.

Helicon uses three different merging methods — weighted average, depth map, and pyramid. Each method merges the images differently and offers varying levels of quality. In addition to this, you can change the smoothing, and radius settings using sliders. Helicon is considered one of the best focus stacking software programs because it offers a quick and effective process. The following process is used to merge images:. Once you have done the above, the program will combine and render the images automatically.

Whereas the speed of Photoshop varies, we noticed that process times for Helicon appear consistent. The program renders images quickly and you are presented with a preview of the finished image in a matter of seconds. When the process is complete, a low-res preview of the image is shown. If you save and open the actual file, you can see the high-resolution version.

Try Helicon Focus for Free. This program is a great alternative to Photoshop and one of the best focus stacking software tools available. Zerene Stacker is available as a trial program — the trial lasts for 30 days. After this, you must purchase a license that is relatively inexpensive.