Focus Stacking Using CombineZ

April 24th, 2009

by Krishna Mohan

After trying out the Auto-Blending in Photoshop CS4 I wanted to compare this method with my other favorite focus stacking software CombineZ. There are quite a few tutorials out there on usage of the CombineZ. I highly recommend the great tutorial from Brian at Digital grin. Brian is one of the greatest Macro specialist I have seen. he as also a great teacher you can check his work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lordv/ & http://www.lordv.smugmug.com

I tried the same set of files which were used for the Auto-Blending in Photoshop CS4 Tutorial. The result was far better with CombineZ. Also the alignment of the various layers was perfect in CombineZ, which in CS4 you need to run auto-align layers separately.

Then I tried manual hand stacking in CombineZ as well as CS4. This is a method which is well explained in CombineZ help file is useful when softwares find difficult to align several layers. CS4 does not provide any such method. If auto-blending is unsuccessful by cs4 there is very little you can do as the masks which are produced by CS4 are quite complicated. Here CombineZ wind hands down.

To conclude CS4 auto-blending is easy and quite fast, where as CombineZ produces far better result. CombineZ also allows manual stacking and to top it all it is free.

The beetle you see with this picture is the same set as my Auto-Blending in Photoshop CS4 Tutorial. Here I have used CombineZ to stack photos compare the photo with the one I posted here

EXIF info…
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Lens: EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM
Exposure Mode: Manual exposure
Exposure Time: 1/200 sec.
Exposure Bias: 0.0
Aperture (F Stop): f/11.0
ISO Used: 200
Flash Used: Flash fired, compulsory flash mode.
White Balance: As Shot
Focal Length: 100.0 mm
Metering Mode: Pattern
Date Time: 2009:03:03 15:45:54
GPS Location in Google Map:
13° 4' 1.9" N, 74° 59' 44.6" E, 127 m.a.s.l.
Copyright © Krishna Mohan
All rights Reserved. This Image may not be copied, reproduced, distributed, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted or trasmitted in any forms or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying & recording without my written permission. If you’d like to make usage request, just ask: drkrishi@drkrishi.com

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One Response to “Focus Stacking Using CombineZ”

Long Horned Beetle | Krishna Mohan Photography Says:
April 24th, 2009 at 9:27 PM

[...] Check out my post comapring CS4 auto-blending with CombineZ here var addthis_pub = ‘drkrishi’; var addthis_language = ‘en’;var addthis_options = ‘email, [...]