I’m a fan of focus stacking for improved depth of field. Photoshop is a good tool but leaves a little to be desired in the seamless rendering of a stacked set of images. If you are only doing a little focus stack imaging it works fine. Photoshop is great for testing the waters of macro photography. If you are going to get serious with high numbers of captures, I highly recommend getting a dedicated tool such as Helicon Focus.

Helicon Focus is a powerful tool for layering your images together with very little need for retouching after the fact.

Pros

  • Easy User Interface
  • Solid consistent results
  • Works with RAW files

Cons

  • None that I could find

Helicon Focus — Specifications and features

  • Accurate rendition of colors
  • Efficient and easy RAW development
  • State-of-the-art processing algorithms
  • Advanced interpolation options
  • Multi-core processing
  • No stack limit
  • 64 bit support
  • Detects processors
  • Smart retouching
  • Smooth integration with Lightroom
  • Create a micropanorama

Helicon Focus — Capturing the geranium

Starting to push the macro envelope I made a stacked series of 65 images of this geranium. When I say pushed, in addition to using the Olympus 60mm M.Zukio f/2.8 macro lens, I added some extension tubes and a microscopic lens filter from Raynox. The Raynox M-250 works to enlarge the image two and a half times on your sensor. The resulting depth of field, even at f/8, was wafer thin. Hence the 65 image stack.

My Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III has a built in focus stack which allows for a single push of the button and the camera fires a frame moves the focus, fires the frame and moves the focus without having to touch the camera during the exposures. With a two second delay it ensures that the camera remains steady for the full sequence.

A few of the 65 frames used to create the image stack. Files were made using the Focus Stack feature in the OM-D E-M1 Mark III. The camera move the focus and fires the frame for the required number of images. Even better you can program in a delay in case you need time for a flash to recycle.

Helicon Focus — Processing the files

I made a decent photo but there was quite a bit of work involved cleaning up the masks created by Photoshop. The other issue is the 65 image stack when layered resulted in a 4 GB file. My system could handle the size but that is chewing up a lot of resources. Photoshop is viable for 10 to 15 images, in my opinion.

Photoshop blend with some of the areas where it had problems keeping the image sharp through to the complete image. Additional mask work would be needed to finalize this photo.

I broke out those same files and used HeliconFocus to blend the photos. There are three modes available in Helicon using different algorithms to process. I advise experimenting with all three depending upon your subject matter. For this, I choose C which is Method C (Pyramid). You can see how the software finds the sharpness in the images by checking out the video below.

Helicon Focus — Photoshop for the finishing

Even though HeliconFocus did a great job on the stacking there was still work to be done. Photoshop allowed me to build a bit more on the bottom of the image for better composition. Then finessing the image with a Luminar 4 Plug-in using various filters to finalize the enhancements.

Final photo with some Photoshop work and enhanced with Luminar 4.

HeliconFocus — Helicon Soft

If you have a Nikon or Canon camera system you can work tethered to your computer. Helicon Remote runs your camera changing the focus, adding a delay if you are using flash and setting the beginning and ending of the focus stack shoot. When I had Canon gear I was amazed at the capabilities of Helicon Remote! For example, you tell the software start here and end there. The software tells you which camera and lens you are using at what aperture. Using that info it reports you will need to take XXX number of images. You say yes, and the software runs the rest just as the Olympus now does in-camera. Pretty slick stuff all around.

HeliconFocus — Pricing

Helicon Soft offers one year licenses from $35 to $65 depending which software package with which you work. Lifetime licenses are $115 to $240. The one year license worked for me. This is the second time I bought one. Now that I have tested it again and know I’m going to use it enough I’m going to upgrade to the Lifetime license. As a matter of fact, I just upgraded while I was finishing up this article.