HELICON FOCUS NEF HOW TO
HELICON FOCUS NEF PROFESSIONAL

It can be integrated with Lightroom, making the whole process seamless. Although having watched the following video, I can certainly see how this tab would be very useful.Īs well as being a very accurate program with lots of additional controls (compared with Photoshop), Helicon also includes many others useful features. I’ve never had to use this feature as I’m usually shooting in the studio and hence my stacks are pretty close to perfect. However, what if you started with a very complicated stack? What if you were photographing a bug and it moved? Or the program was struggling with one particular area? Helicon Focus has a retouching tab which can help with even the most challenging of stacks. More Useful Features Of Helicon Focusīeing able to use the various sliders (radius and smoothing) as well as the different rendering methods is fantastic and usually produces great results. I’m sure there will be some exceptions and you still have to take care to shoot correctly, but so long as you do, you should be ok. In the few months I have been using this software, I have yet to find a set of images that it cannot handle.

HELICON FOCUS NEF PROFESSIONAL

Whether you’re a professional sitting with a client or an amateur creating images for your own pleasure, accuracy is of the utmost importance. The two most important things that Helicon gives us over Photoshop are speed and accuracy the 2nd being especially important. I’ve had the same experience as Vadim except I have attempted, and waited for Photoshop to stack images, only to be disappointed with the results produced. Sure, there are lots of other added elements, some which I’ll cover, but it’s the way that Helicon renders your stacked images that makes it so much better than Photoshop.Īs you can see from the video, Helicon is much faster than Photoshop and produces some very good results, once you get the right settings dialed in. These rendering methods are the most important part of the program. He made this great video which takes you through the three main rendering methods of Helicon Focus. Vadim Chiline of Epic Mind Studio is one of the instructors over at Photigy a website dedicated to product photography education. For you, hopefully, this little review will help you decide. For me, the answer was an unequivocal yes. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that it produces results superior to Photoshop, but the big question is “is it worth it?”. Helicon Focus is a program dedicated to focus stacking. That’s where Helicon Focus came to my rescue. In my personal experience shooting product photos, Photoshop could not produce results I was happy with.

HELICON FOCUS NEF HOW TO

Our very own Matthew Saville made this excellent video which shows you exactly how to focus stack within Photoshop. It is a viable option though and one which many photographers use. Yes, you can focus stack in Photoshop, but it’s slow, sometimes painfully so, and, more importantly, the results are not always perfect. Some of you may be jumping out of your seats at this point saying, “I can do this in Photoshop! I don’t need another program!” You would be both right and wrong. For others, it’s an absolute necessity that every little detail is sharp, for instance, product photography. For some, it’s a stylistic choice just like any other photographic technique. This is where focus stacking comes into play. If, however, we would like everything to be in focus – a flower in the foreground to a building in the background, an object filling our frame, and so on – things become a little more difficult. If we want very little in focus, most of us know how to accomplish this. That depth of field may cover anything from meters to millimeters. Your camera, lens, distance to subject and aperture will produce a particular depth of field. What Is Focus Stacking And Why Should I Use It?įor those that don’t have the time to read my previous article, I will give you a quick rundown.

Helicon focus nef