The Geek in Question

Want to contact The Geek?
Drop me a line at tgiq.ce at gmail dot com!
Geeky Tweets
- @LorraineBrett20 Liar. 3 months ago
- @LorraineBrett20 You didn't just "hear" a different idea, you *endorsed* one. 3 months ago
- @tpoi I need a folder like that. 6 months ago
Blog: |
The Bug Geek |
Topics: |
Insects, Nature, Photography |
Flickr Photos
BugShot 2012 Crowd-Funding
Goal: $1000 (registration and half of the travel expenses)
Raised: $800
YOU PEOPLE ARE SO AWESOME! Thank you!!!
Copyright
All photographs and text are my own, unless otherwise noted. All text and images appearing on www.thebuggeek.com © C. M. Ernst 2009-2013 and may not be used without prior permission. See "About the Photographs" to learn more.
Man, that’s a really great first attempt at focus-stacking. I’ve not tried it myself yet – what program did you use?
Photoshop, I did it manually! The two shots were hand-held and note quite the same angle, and I was feeling too lazy to research software, so I did it myself. It took a bit of tinkering, and a careful eye would notice some issues, but it’s pretty good at this size…
Cool. Is this ‘File, Scripts, Load files into Stack’ in Photoshop? I may have to try it – although I don’t think I could hold my camera steady enough to get two shots that differed only in focal point.
CombineZP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CombineZP) is a great open source program for stacking. The images have to be exactly the same pixel size, so don’t do any cropping until after you have the stack. Also, you can get some distortion near the margins and if there is a databar on the images the program flips. Otherwise, though, it is pretty good.
Nope, this is “load two images as layers, make one semi-transparent, rotate one manually to compensate for slightly different hand-held vantage point, frig around with position until they look pretty good, manually erase unwanted components from both layers, merge layers to create one image…realize you’ve got a big blank spot that you missed, discover you can’t “undo” the merge, swear lots, repeat entire process (only this time a little more carefully), merge layers, soften a few iffy-looking bits with Blur and Clone tools.” Simple, no?
(I should have called this comment “There’s a Stack tool in Photoshop? lol <–newb)
Ha – that’s what I used to do, more or less, with SEMs. It always pays to keep a backup with the layers separate and only merge them for some finished product.
But heck, CombineZP is so easy that I’ve given up on the John Henry method. Haven’t tried the stack tool in Photoshop yet, so it is only there in theory.
I’ll have to check it out, thanks a lot for the tip, Dave!
Pingback: Sunday Bugfest « The Bug Whisperer