Pill bug fun

[rjlittlefield]

Photoshop defaults to the bracket keys but lets you set them to whatever you want. My own preference is to set them to the , . keys but thats just my preference, dont change anything for my sake as I dont use the function in ZS much.

Thanks for the info. Surely other people have this issue too, so it's good for me to learn about it even though I don't have time right now to do an elegant solution.

Yes the S key is good but as far as I know only for 1 source image and one output, in the video example I only had to source images as it was a simple stack but I will often have 3-4-5 source images and then I have to manually switch between the layers in the output images box which is slow (correct me if im wrong)

Correct, switching source images is slow no matter where the images are coming from.

Yes, I mean commit retouching. Once this is done my "redos" are gone and I have to go back to layers to get something.

Thanks for the clarification. Yes, in Zerene "commit" is something like save, close, and reload the saved image. It's an expensive operation that throws away all history of the editing session.

Which is basically the same as in photoshop but there I have complete control over layer opacity, masks, blending mode and the ability to make channel selections, brush shape etc and I will always put my stacks through photoshop anyway so merging there is the natural thing for me

For me Zerene is a brilliant stacking tool but it stops there. It's not a retouching tool for me which is why I made the video in the first place because people asked how I digitally cleaned my bugs in the first place. I know that there is a trend at the moment against using photoshop in photography in general but hen people ask specifically how I do it I dont like lying .

No disagreement here! All my images get run through Photoshop and that's what I recommend that other people do too.

I appreciate this is your support forum for Zerene and obviously also a way to sell licenses so if you dont like people referencing Photoshop let me know and I wont post any more about how my images come to be.

To be clear, photomacrography.net is a support forum for people, not for any particular software. The more information we can share about all products, the better off we are.

If it seems different from this, then there is a social problem I need to work on.

I realize the questions/comments in my earlier post were a little curt, and I apologize for that. It was approaching 2 am my time and I was tired, so I didn't take time to wordsmith very carefully. My concern was only to be sure that techniques and tradeoffs are accurately understood, by myself as well as others.

I look forward to learning more about how you work. Even if it involves another stacking program, tell us about that too!

--Rik

[NikonUser]

If it seems different from this, then there is a social problem I need to work on.
--Rik

No problem, no work needed.
Photomacrography.net serves its purpose as an incredible source, the best there is, for macrophotography techniques.
I, for one, am sicerely grateful that Zerene Stacker is made available at a reasonable cost. Its promotion is by others rather than by the developer.

[MaxRockbin]

Just some notes on my notes. The point of the exercise was to try to learn new techniques (you can read about all the glorious features of Photoshop, but seeing them in action for the exact type of work you want to do is really the fastest way to pick up new stuff):

Some techniques in the Demo:

-Select an area with a feathered (eg. 20+ px feathering) lasso and click on one of the add adjustment layer buttons (e.g. the curves button) to add that adj. layer with the layer mask already set to the selection. This will save me time vs adding the layer then creating the mask. It's particularly useful for D.'s technique, described in another thread, of selecting many (up to 50!) different regions with their own separate curves applied. I have found that if you have a bit of extra glare or fog on a particular part of a bug, this is a great way of bringing it back down - revealing more detail - and still blending in with the rest of the picture. The lasso/add adjustment method might also be great for selective levels to remove flare in particular regions.

-Adding an Empty layer at the top for clone stamping and healing brush (aka band-aid).
By setting the sampling area to current and below, you end up with non-destructive changes that you can toggle.

-Groups: I've never had much need for them, but the grouping of the many adjustment layers makes a lot of sense for this kind of work.

-Merging visible layers into a new top layer. This is handy (and I've done it by a more awkward procedure). The keyboard shortcut is good to know.
Mac: Command-Option-Shift-E
PC: Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E

These are things I'm sure I will use in future edit sessions, so THANK YOU D!

Couple of things about my own Bug Pic Edits:
I still think, despite the lag which can be a hassle, it makes sense to do at least to do the retouch of a DMAP output with PMAX inside of Zerene. I just think the result blends better with fewer artifacts. Also, if you use slabs, Zerene can be helpful for merging details from the slabs into a DMAP image. Photoshop is easier and more flexible, though.

Graphics Tablet: If you work on fly pictures or any other image with fine detail with overlaps that need to be repaired, a graphics tablet will make your life easier in Zerene. (I've petitioned for pressure sensitive brush size in Zerene - which would solve the missing [] key problem - but not holding my breath). A graphics tablet in for this kind of work in Photoshop is very practical. I recommend Monoprice.com. They sell excellent tablets for very few $. They often get better reviews than comparable Wacoms. They also have programmable buttons (for the S or Shift S or [] keys for example for use in Zerene), so you don't need to use a keyboard much while you're working. Takes some practice to get good with one, but it will save time and possibly relieve budding carpel tunnel.

[abpho]

Thanks for the video daemonoropsis. Nice job. Amazing what Photoshop can do.

[Rylee Isitt]

These are fantastic images, personally I would have left the hairs in (more authentic).

This looks a bit like nicely colorized SEM. And I mean that as a compliment: very good textural detail.

I have to agree regarding Zerene's retouching features for the most part. Retouching in Zerene is tedious compared to photoshop, even just switching between input images takes a few seconds and usually results in a "ding" noise when I impatiently try to start painting in detail. So when I work with Zerene's retouching, I end up hearing "ding! ding! ding!" constantly, haha. Turn off the sound and then you no longer have feedback on why the retouching isn't working, so that doesn't help.

I will say that Zerene is easier when working with hundreds of slices and having to almost completely rebuild a stack manually. Photoshop quickly runs out of a memory after you have 100 or more layers. And that probably tells us why Zerene is slower - it's probably not caching the full input images (plus alignment modifications) in memory, but photoshop is.

Having to manually retouch a stack with individual slices is a rare occurrence because PMAX usually does a great job in the areas that DMAP has problems with. Selectively compositing PMAX and DMAP almost completely fixes all of the major problems with an image, and that's just faster and easier to do in photoshop (once you get past the learning curve).

[Rylee Isitt]

MaxRockbin,

To add, it looks like we use pretty much the same approach in photoshop. It really works well.

A few notes that might help

- I put my "bandaid" layer underneath most of my adjustment layers. This makes sure that the adjustments get applied to your heals/clones as well, and not the other way around, so that you don't have to redo your healing/cloning if you change the adjustment layers.

- I use quick mask a lot to paint selections in with black and white brushes. If you haven't explored this feature, I highly recommend it.

- Once my rig is done taking pictures for a stack, I carefully remove the subject and take a bunch more photos with the background only. Often I just take a single exposure at the far slice position, but you can also do a full stack of the backdrop (using the same position/slices as when the subject was in place). Obviously you need to leave all the lighting, camera and backdrop position unchanged. The idea is that your backdrop-only shots should perfectly match the areas of visible backdrop in your image. This comes in handy for getting rid of halos around the edges of your subject! It's not a cure-all, but it's still a useful technique.

[MaxRockbin]

Thanks! Good stuff. Snapping some shots of the background seems like a great idea.

In another thread there was a discussion of using a shot or two end the end of a stack with the aperture closed down (M42 iris with microscope objectives) to smooth the transition between in and out of focus areas and give more background context. It seems like the best way to blend those last shots is to align them with the rest of the stack but not stack them. Use them only for retouching. Probably the same method would work well for your background shots.

[Rylee Isitt]

Max,

Yup, closing the aperture at the near and far slice positions for a high DOF shot works very well with PMAX to give you a nice transition from in-focus to out-of-focus regions. I started doing that in January and it's a very useful technique. It definitely wasn't my idea, I heard about it somewhere on this forum. But like so many tips and tricks, I forgot where...

I use f/16 on my MP-E 65mm to do this. I had the idea to add a manual M42-mount iris into my optical path for doing the same with my infinity-corrected microscope objectives but so far haven't read up enough in my optics books to figure out where to put the iris... before the tube lens? Some distance after? I really have no idea...

You can also overshoot the subject and use a lens blur with a feathered selection in photoshop to accomplish a similar thing, but it's less authentic and actually more difficult. It's easier if your input images are the real deal

[ChrisR]

before the tube lens? Some distance after? I really have no idea...

Hard next to the objective is what I've done. Ideally you'd want it "in" the objective - at the same place as the effective aperture stop* - so you don't get perspective shifts etc.
But as you can't do that, you can/do get them.

* - I'm not sure if that has a special name.

[Rylee Isitt]

Chris,

I suspected it wouldn't be a perfect solution, but I've had this M42 iris for years now and don't know what else to do with it, haha.

Zerene has been very good so far at handling the type of minor perspective shifts caused by moving my lenses back and forth as the means of stacking. The alignment algorithm is great... far superior to photoshop, that's for sure.

I suppose I'll just have to try this and see how well it manages!

[ChrisR]

The point is that it's not a question of getting the alignment right, it's that the details move about relative to each other when the perspective changes. That means you get some double imaging even in the "best aligned" case.
As I said elsewhere, it's usually only the background you want, so you can relatively easily remove everything else, that's causing the problem.

[Rylee Isitt]

Chris,

Interestingly I just ran into this issue when stopping down my MP-E 65mm. I was getting double imaging in Zerene. I thought for sure that what you described was the problem, until I looked closely at the unaligned vs aligned images... and found that the stopped down images had no perspective shift compared to the wide open images at the same slice position.

Zerene just aligned them incorrectly... it seems to be confused by the drastic change in bokeh between f/3.5 and f/16 even though perspective has not changed (as can be seen in the unaligned images).

I thought I could tame this problem by using less severe apertures, f/5.6, f/8, and so on. But the problem persisted.

Unfortunately Zerene's alignment system appears to be all or nothing - there is no apparent way to lock the alignment of individual slices, to set them manually, or to set individual preferences for alignment on a per-slice basis. In fact what I really need to do is tell Zerene to ignore the stopped down images during alignment, but then copy the alignment settings from the wide-open images at the corresponding positions.

Thankfully, Zerene uses XML for the project file so I don't have to breakout a hex editor and try to decode the format. This means I can manually edit the project file, insert the stopped down images and set their alignment to be equal to the wide open slices at the same positions.

But it's late here, so I'm going to have to sleep and try that tomorrow... er... later today.

[pontop]

When I acquired a my M42 iris it was after reading several threads here including discussions on where to locate it. I cannot point you to the source (I think Rik was definitely part of the discussion) but my notes were that the iris should be as close to the objective as possible and to have some extension between the tube lens (at least when the tube lens is a Raynox) and the iris. I am not at home now, but from memory what I used was the longest of the tubes from a fleabay set of M42 tubes.

/Bo

[Rylee Isitt]

Bo,

Yup, Raynox here as well! They were just too cost effective to ignore, even though I do have a 100mm and 200mm lens that seem to work very well for the same job.

The sequence of adapters that Rik figured out is always good for a chuckle, too.

I'll give this a try, probably when it comes time to shoot the mustard seed which is about the right size to justify using a 4x objective.

I'm also curious as to what would happen if I use my 200mm camera lens as the tube lens... and stop it down... and try to stack by tweaking focus instead of objective position.

Hmm, I think there is an optics course offered as part of the physics program at the university. I should probably take it, haha.

[Chris S.]

I'm also curious as to what would happen if I use my 200mm camera lens as the tube lens... and stop it down...

I've done this. I predict you will see no increase in DOF at all as you stop down this converging lens. You will also see no decrease in brightness or resolution, until you hit a certain point--perhaps f/8, where vignetting will begin. So stopping the converging lens down gives resultants that resemble not at all the results of stopping down the objective.

(However, I've seen a small improvement in contrast when stopping the 200mm converging lens to a point just before it vignettes. My guess is the iris is blocking a bit of stray light from bouncing around.)

Cheers,

--Chris