A few weeks ago I published an article here on Fstoppers about hand-held focus stacking. In this article, I share my field workflow, as well as the automatic stacking option Photoshop offers to stitch all the images together during photo editing. This option has its limitations and since I recently had to work on some very complex stacks I had to look for a better solution. And with Helicopter focus I found it.
For over 10 years, I have now stacked my landscape and architecture photos for optimal sharpness from foreground to background. Using the super-sharp distance while trying to make everything acceptable with just one photo has always been too big of a compromise for me. Acceptable sharpness is often not sharp enough for large prints that I want to sell.
Because of the limitations of Photoshop’s automatic stacking algorithm, which often results in uncorrected areas in the final image that need to be fixed, I usually do the stacking manually using masks in Photoshop. . And for most photos, this is a viable option. But especially when it comes to woodland photos, it can be difficult to find and combine the sharpest areas. For some such photos, the stacking can take me up to half an hour or even an hour.
Once I took my first pictures of the chaotic jungles of Costa Rica in Monteverde, I was able to afford manual stacking. I needed a more convenient and precise way to piece everything together.
Helicopter focus
I heard about Helicon Focus years ago but for some reason dismissed it. After Alex Armitage mentioned it again in a comment under my handheld focus stacking post, I had to give it a try. Conveniently, Helicon Focus offers a 30 days trial with full functionality. I downloaded and installed it, put a complex pile of woods into Helicon’s Lightroom Plugin, and quickly stacked and retouched my first photo with it.
I was blown away by the results. Helicon Focus is not only very intuitive to use with a beautiful interface, but its algorithms also work surprisingly well for my detailed photos of woodland from Costa Rica. Along with the autofocus of Canon R5, which allows me to shoot focus stacks very quickly, Helicon Focus allows me to deal with very complex landscape scenes. An example is the photo below, where I have a fern from the foreground reaching into the background. Scenes like this, where I have to deal with foreground and background intersections, are often difficult to manually stack, without a clear line where I can draw the mask.
Stacking Workflows in Helicon Focus
As I wrote above, Helicon Focus comes with a Lightroom plugin, which is automatically installed, if you have Lightroom. This makes the workflow very quick. If you want to use the standalone version also possible. Aside from the first few steps, the workflow overlaps with the one in Lightroom, which I show below.
Preparing images in Lightroom
Before stacking some images, I usually prepare them in Lightroom. I just take raw photos, and I apply some standard tweaks to them, including increasing shadows and reducing highlights slightly, making slight adjustments to temperature and tone, removing lens distortions, and chromatic aberration as well as reduced sharpness. Sharpening is best done at the end of the processing and kept low during roughing to avoid too many artifacts. In addition, I also moved the Dehaze slider to the left for forest shots, as it helps give those photos a more dreamy look.
The final step in the preparation is to synchronize the settings across all the images in the stack to create a seamless blend.
Export to Helicon Focus
This is where it gets interesting because Helicon Focus offers two workflows.
TIFF . Workflow
Typical workflow using TIFF images. This is the workflow I choose if I also have to do exposure blending for the background. I usually do pre-exposure blending and save the result as a TIFF. Then I put the blended image into Helicon Focus along with the images I took for the foreground and mid-ground.
This is also the workflow you would use if you weren’t editing in Lightroom. You can apply your raw transformation in an editor of your choice, export your photos as TIFFs, and open them in a standalone version of Helicon Focus.
Workflow D
I’ve been using DNG images since I started taking pictures and using Lightroom. When I import my raw images, I automatically convert them to DNG images. This way, I make my image portfolio future-proof because the DNG standard is open and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to open my DNG images for years to come. With different camera manufacturers’ proprietary raw formats, I’m not sure about that.
Also, I never noticed any quality loss through this conversion. The only important thing is not to enable lossy compression.
With DNG being an open standard, it is also widely supported in software other than Adobe’s Creative Suite. And Helicon Focus is one of those programs that make excellent use of the D format. It allows me to do focus stacking on the declassified raw data. What I get as a result of the stacking is a DNG image, which I can edit in the same way as the original stack image, including all the settings I made during the preparation. The only difference is that I now have a perfectly sharp image to do my raw processing.
Stack Render
Helicon Focus provides three algorithms for stacking. I’ve only used Method B (depth maps) so far and have had great results. But if you want to dig a little deeper into the strengths of different algorithms, you might want to check out Documentation on Helicon.
With the depth map algorithm, I was able to adjust two settings, which affect how blending of sharp areas in different photos is performed. This can help with slight movement in foliage or with areas where the foreground intersects directly with the out-of-focus background. Smaller Radius and less smoothing can result in sharper images with finer details, while Larger Radius and more smoothing help reduce halos and other artifacts.
Editing in Helicon Focus
The biggest game changer for me was the editing module in Helicon Focus. It’s similar to the manual stacking I did in Photoshop, but with much better tools. I get a split view where on the left side I can select my source image from the stack and on the right side I see the rendered stack. Then I can copy over the plain artboard and I even get a preview when hovering over an area.
Be sure to watch this article’s feature video to better understand how the feature works.
Save and return to Lightroom
Once I’m happy with the stack, I save the image as a DNG, exit Helicon Focus, and the photo automatically appears in Lightroom. There, I can now make even more coarse adjustments. The adjustments I made previously in the prep phase are done properly.
Alternative solution
This article would not be complete without mentioning Zerene Stacker. With similar features and algorithms, this is the main competitor of Helicon at the same price as the Helicon Focus Pro version. I haven’t tested it myself, because since switching to Helicon Focus I’ve been happy. Based on some video tutorials I’ve watched and articles I’ve read, it looks like Zerene Stacker offers a few more settings to fine-tune the stacking. While this is great, it can also be a bit overwhelming. The question is always where is the attraction and I think Helicon Focus is very close to it. It’s also remarkably fast and offers the DNG workflow described above, which is something I don’t want to miss.
But as always, if you have time, do your own tests and make the right choice based on the results you find. And whichever of the two solutions you choose, you’ll get results that are superior to what Photoshop offers or what you can do manually.
