In another words, with zerene stacker assuming you are using a i7 computer which has 12gb ram and average quality ssd drive, you can finish 10 stacks containing 100 photo each in approximately 7 hours. With a little sharpness difference you can get about 3.69 times faster results. However, when it comes to speed, Helicon Focus wins the race with a huge difference. For me, these are not features that going to sell the product. In every case I tried I could not get a usable zDepth and 3d model is nothing but a toy. IMHO, both zDepth and 3d model outputs are not useful. It is true that Helicon Focus has a better interface, more responsive and gives you more features like 3 render methods, zdepth output and 3d model output. At some parts Method B is better then DMap, and in some parts vice versa. But with a more carefull inspection, Zerene Stacker results are a little bit sharper in general. Method B and DMap is looking very similar too at the first glance. As I told before, PMax and Method C are very similar to each other. However, at the end of the page I provide the original files, so you can check from there if you like. I couldnt see any more usable part of it when compared with method C and B. I think Method A in Helicon Focus is out of competition. Result Qualityīelow there are 4 different 100% crops with all 2 methods from each software. The thing is, until there is a RAW pipeline for Zerene Stacker, I wont do a fair time comparison, because if there is a RAW pipeline, I refuse to use anything else. I believe even I use TIF for both of them, Helicon will be still much faster then Zerene Stacker. I am testing TIF vs DNG, but I am not sure this entirely related with the image format and loading/decoding times. In Helicon Focus when even all three methods combined it still takes less time then PMax calculation of Zerene Stacker alone. Here are the calculation timings for each method: The parts that can not be done well like the edges and thin parts should be retouched either using the original photographs or from other methods. Ideally, one would want to use most parts of the image from DMap or Method B results. They tend to have a wider contrast range too. Other methods (DMap in Zerene Stacker and Method A/B in Helicon Focus) creates less noisy, better quality results.
It also compensates better the Lens breathing effect (or the gaps occurred because of literally moving the camera in this case) compared to the other algorithms. Method C and PMax creates an extraordinary job on very thin parts like hair follicles. Although the picture is more contrast and it creates something like a halo effect especially on the highlights. By cleaner, I dont mean better, but most of the time the results from these methods are usable without any combination. PMax and Method C are relatively faster to calculate compared to the other algorithms. PMax’s algorithm is very similar to Method C (Pyramid) in Helicon. The logic is to collect all data and use the best parts of each. Methods A and B has Radius and Smooth settings, where Method C does not have any setting. These are Method A, Method B, and Method C. Helicon Focus offers 3 different focus stack methods, which you can retouch and combine them. Lets see how they do when actually processing the images. Wow… I was expecting DNG to be faster but more than two times? I wasnt expecting that. Since file size of DNG is much less and make the format easier to load/reload it speeds up the whole pipeline, not only import/export.Įxporting timings for 66 images from Lightroom with the plug-ins: DNG file can hold the whole of your data with a optimum size and it can also hold the metadata. In fact, this format can hold more color data that a regular DSLR can shoot. With the 16 bit TIF pipeline there is actually no pixel data loss. So I stuck with 16 bit TIF export to test Zerene Stacker. Zerene Stacker does not have any raw support yet (which makes me surprised). Helicon Focus supports raw pipeline with DNG input and output.
Pipelineįirst of all, Helicon Focus has a big advantage over Zerene Stacker in terms of pipeline. Although there were not any other processes during that time, the results are still should be considered as approximate. I used the same machine (i7/12GB Ram/SSD Hard Drive) for every step. Light Setup: 2X Yongnuo 560-IV with diffusers Lens: Lomo 3.7x Microscope Objective on a set of extension tubes and cheapest bellows in the market. Today I did a quick test on one of my focus stacks to compare the capabilities of Zerene Stacker and Helicon Focus
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