Helicon Focus 4.40, "Method B"

[Charles Krebs]

For all you "stackers" using Helicon Focus it might be worth your time to check out the latest 4.40 version. It gives a choice of 2 "methods". Method B greatly reduces the dreaded "halo" that sometimes occurs around the edges of a subject. Sometimes Method B loses a small bit of detail on the subjects edges (not always!... depends on subject and background), but it will be a big help for some stacks. (In certain instances, if there is a slight loss in edge detail, I could see running both "A" and "B" and doing some judicious combining).
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http://www.krebsmicro.com

[microcollector]

I have tried the B mode on a couple of micro minerals stacks and was very pleased with the results. I also noticed that the out of focus background seemed to look a bit better.

Doug
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micro minerals - the the unseen beauty of the mineral kingdom
Microminerals - Canon 550D/Nikon D300 on Nikon PB-6 bellows with 4X or 10X Nikon finite objectives or Nikon 105 Micro Nikkor AI f2.8 lens.
Other macro photos Nikon D300 with Nikkor 105 VR ED IF lens.

My Mindat Mineral Photos
http://www.mindat.org/user-362.html#2

[rjlittlefield]

And a counterpoint...

I tried Method B on my spider pedipalp; the result was a disaster. Method A worked fine although it did produce some halo. But Method B gave large fuzzy regions where bristles overlapped, failed to render some isolated bristles sharply at all, and created obvious banding in the background from what had previously been an unnoticed shift in background brightness from back to front of the stack. This was with default parameters R=8, S=4. I tested using default parameters for auto-adjustment, and also with auto-adjustment turned off; there was no significant difference.

At this time, I speculate that Method B is suited to simple geometries where there are no fine details isolated in space. More investigation required, obviously. My best recommendation at this point is "give it a try" (and tell us what happens).

--Rik

[rjlittlefield]

Further test results...and much more positive...

I tested three old stacks that had given big problems with "mush" in low contrast regions.

The new Helicon Focus "Method B" did dramatically better in each case, particularly when the Radius parameter was increased to 20 instead of the default 8.

Test stacks included:
phero66's flower: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1667
Bruce Williams' egg: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1808
Doug Breda's bread: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2245 (image 3)

The composite images produced by Method B in these cases are as good as anything else that I've been able to produce, and the cost is only to select the method and click Run. Very nice.

--Rik