Helicon Focus

Helicon Focus is a program that creates one completely focused image from several partially focused images by combining the focused areas.

The program is designed for macrophotography, microphotography and hyperfocal landscape photography  to cope with the shallow depth-of-field problem.

Why Helicon Focus?

  • Quality: advanced interpolation techniques, 16 bit workflow, direct RAW input
  • Scope: unlimted number of images, resolution over 100Mpixels, 64 bit support, Windows/Mac versions
  • Performance: very fast, multi-threaded, i7 compatible, batch and command line modes available
  • Tools: clone from source brush to repaint moving parts, 3D model , dust map, 2D panorama

Helicon 3D Viewer

Helicon 3D Viewer is a free utility that helps to visualize a stack of images as a interactive 3D model.

 

Helicon Remote (new!)

Helicon Remote is a utility that automates focus and exposure bracketing. The program sends commands to camera via USB cable to change focus distance with regular steps and takes shots.

Helicon Remote is available in Pro and X64 licenses of Helicon Focus.

 

Copyright: Charles Krebs, 2008

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Slideshow of the source images:

Fly Eye



Copyright: Charles Krebs, 2005

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Helicon Focus Lite (basic version):

  • Automatically adjusts and resizes images (important for stereomicroscopes and macrophotography)
  • Uses all available processors (1.7 times faster with 2 processors, 2.3 times faster with 4 processors)
  • Preserves details by using advanced interpolators for image manipulation (Lanczos, Sinc256)
  • Internal workflow always uses 16 bit color depth to preserve colors
  • Processes an unlimited number of images in the stack
  • Supports dust map to automatically remove black points from the resulting images
  • Automatically adjusts brightness of the adjacent images
  • Reads RAW, 8bit and 16bit TIFFs, JPEG, JPEG 2000, BMP, etc
  • Writes 8bit and 16bit TIFFs, JPEG, JPEG 2000, BMP
  • Adds text and scale bar (Windows version v.4.0+)
  • Provides command line interface to call it from other applications (Windows version v.4.0+)

Helicon Focus Pro (advanced version):

  • Includes all the features of the Lite version
  • Retouching brush to clone from aligned source images to the resulting image (cannot be performed with external photo editor)
  • Export of 3D model of the object to Helicon 3D Viewer (Windows version included into Helicon Focus installation)
  • Batch mode to process multiple image stacks or the same stack with different parameters (Windows version v.4.0+)
  • 2D micropanorama
  • Export of animated stacks (see sample) (Windows version v4.30+)

Helicon Focus Pro X64 (premium version):

Windows versionWindows platform:

Helicon Focus uses Helicon Processing Server to overcome 3Gb address space limitation for Windows 32 bit applications. Using this technique Helicon Focus is able to get additional 3Gb of the address space on 32 bit OS and all available RAM on 64 bit OS.

  • 32 bit OS (Windows versionWindows XP): additional 3Gb to process big images
  • 64 bit OS (Windows versionWindows Vista x64, Windows versionWindows XP x64): higher performace + access to all available RAM

Starting from Helicon Focus 4.70 multiprocessor support is available in all licenses (Lite, Pro, Pro X64).
Multiprocessor license is replaced with X64 license for all users.

Mac OS XMac OS platform:

Higher performace + access to all available RAM

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