Halo prevention and Post-editing

[John C. House]

Screen shot 2010-05-22 at 6.01.01 PM.jpg (158.4 KiB) Viewed 469 times

I continue to have problems with halos, and I have not been able to figure out either how to prevent or to fix the problem. I have spent a good deal of time in Photoshop trying to clean images up, but I'm confident there is a better way. I have tried somewhat methodically to find the best combination of radius and smoothing, and 7/2 seems to work best, but there is still significant blurriness. After reading other threads, I have lowered depth map feathering to 1, but that did not seem to make it any better. Here is a bit of an orchid image (stack of 9) at 100%. What am I doing wrong?

[Stas Yatsenko]

You are welcome to upload your stack to our server (as described at http://www.heliconsoft.com/ftp.html) so we can analyze it.

There are two types of artifacts. First type is cause by the program which was not able to find the best area for the resulting image. We recommend to fix it with retouching brushes of Helicon Focus (Pro and X64 version). You can fix artifact by a couple of rough stokes, cloning areas from the prealigned source image. In photoshop you do not have this infomaion and have to make a lot of meticulous work.

The second type is caused by optical problem. The forground object which is out of focus, masks the background details around it. The only way to avoid this is to increase DOF.

[John C. House]

Thanks, Stas. I can certainly increase dof; I'm not sure what the aperture was on these (I'd have to fine the originals), but what is generally a good setting? Would f14 or f 16 be okay?

As far as the editing, is there a tutorial on how to use the retouching brushes in Helicon Focus Pro? I've looked at Lynda and did not find one. I'd like to have a video or a detailed description to go by if that is available.

Thanks,

-John

[Stas Yatsenko]

John,

There is no online video tutorial yet, but we will prepare it soon. The use of brushes is quite straitforward anyway.

I cannot tell you for sure which aperture is the best. F5.6-F8 is condered to be the optimal, giving the best resolution. How it degrades toward F16? I think it depends on the lens and size of the sensor. I may find some calculation online. I would suggest you to make a couple of shots to see the difference between F8 and F16.

[John C. House]

Thanks, Stas. Where would I find a detailed description of how to use the brushes?

[Stas Yatsenko]

John,

Please use this link:
http://www.heliconsoft.com/focus/help/e ... touch.html

[John C. House]

I guess I am a bit daft here. I have some trouble knowing which image(s) to use as a source image. I suppose I have not played with this enough, but still have not been very happy with my level of understanding or the results. I, for one, look forward to a video or more detailed description of the process.

[Stas Yatsenko]

Please note that you can press F1 in the program to get detailed help for Helicon Focus.