check before stack ?

A forum to ask questions, post setups, and generally discuss anything having to do with photomacrography and photomicroscopy.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

Online
Adalbert
Posts: 2429
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 1:09 pm

check before stack ?

Post by Adalbert »

Hello everyone,
Is there any tool for the checking of the quality of a set of photographs?
I’m asking for that, because I had a problem with the stacking-software yesterday.
One picture (of ca.100) was unexposed, because one flash didn’t fire.
I didn’t’ realize that and started the stacking. So, the result was not really good :-(
Then I analyzed every picture, removed the unexposed one and started the stacking again.
This time everything was OK.
BR, Adi

BugEZ
Posts: 850
Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2011 7:15 pm
Location: Loves Park Illinois

Post by BugEZ »

Adi,

You ask if there is any tool for checking a stack of photographs...

On my Windows based PC I usually preview the stack with an image browser such as Media Player so I can select where to start and stop the stack. Improperly exposed images can also be easily detected with a quick viewing of the image folder in Explorer with "large icons" displayed.

I recommend sorting the root cause of the flash failure. A lot of your time and energy goes into a composite image and you want it to be well spent!

Kind regards,

Keith

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
Posts: 23564
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
Contact:

Post by rjlittlefield »

Same here, except that I use either a basic Windows Explorer window usually with "Large" icons, or the Lightroom thumbnails mode.

On a related topic, using the Windows Explorer window also lets me use drag-and-drop to get files into Zerene Stacker.

It is rare that I use File > Add File(s) from the Zerene Stacker menus, because the Explorer window gives me better ability to see both thumbnails and other file attributes such as timestamp.

--Rik

Online
Adalbert
Posts: 2429
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 1:09 pm

Post by Adalbert »

Hello Keith, hello Rik,
OK, up to yesterday I have ever checked the pictures in this way you mentioned
but yesterday I didn’t notice that one was improperly exposed :-)
Bye, Adi

Bushman.K
Posts: 162
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 5:49 pm
Location: OR, USA
Contact:

Post by Bushman.K »

There are different ways to visually check images (for example, you can use free IrfanView in thumbnail mode in addition to those tools mentioned above).

But there is no simple way to check images automatically because of how diverse they are.
In general case, image statistics (histogram shape and used colors, for example) should change smoothly from image to image, but in certain circumstances value of error can easily be comparable with value of regular difference between the frames.

I can probably imagine some relatively simple workflow, where ImageMagick might be used to extract histograms in numerical form and GNUPlot will visualize them together as 3D surface or "fence plot", but I don't think it will be effective.

Online
Adalbert
Posts: 2429
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2015 1:09 pm

Post by Adalbert »

Hello Bushman,
In my case the biggest problem of the visual check are my eyes :-)
BR, Adi

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic