Eirik

I almost always use the same export settings and it’s getting a bit annoying to have to set them up every time. Especially when I export the same photo multiple times (because I expose different layers per export). Is there a way to make the app remember my last used settings? Or something similar?

That’s very cool! Thanks.

That looks close to what I want. Except that I want the two photos to be perfectly placed so that the white frame (the white background) is the same thickness on all sides, including between them. And I’m not sure I could eyeball it the way I seem to have to do with your method. I did not know about those guides though, so I’ll see what I can do with them. Quick edit: oh there is a thing that lets me input the exact pixel height(?) I want them at. That might work! Is there any way to save the placements of the guides? I’m going to do this 10 times. Maybe I can just load all the photos onto the same canvas and export them one after another by hiding the layers I don’t need in the moment, if that makes sense. Edit 2: this is working very well actually. I think this has been solved. Thank you very much Dan!

Just to make it easy to show what I mean, I’ll upload a screenshot. Does anyone know how to align these perfectly?

I export with the same settings almost all the time. Would be very nice if the app remembered my export settings from the last time I exported.

Im on iPad, I don’t think I get that source panel. Or maybe it’s hidden or I’m just not good at paying attention. To me the whole point of focus stacking IS to have a wider depth of field AND a soft background. But sure, I guess that is not easy to achieve. If I can’t make it work then I’ll just go back to shooting the way I used to. That difference in color is only here on the website. When I exported the it from Affinity I probably chose something other than sRGB. While the other one was exported from Lightroom where I already have set sRGB as the default.

Hmm I’ll have a look at that. But I do rely on Affinity to make the final product for me. I’m not importing each photo in separate layers and manually masking out everything I don’t want. I guess I could, but I’m not doing that. I wonder if that pattern comes from the fact that I’m shooting with Fujifilm? I did not edit much, no more than the standard sharpening in Lightroom. I increased the exposure and lowered the highlights some. I shoot more photos than you did though. I used wider apertures so I needed more photos I think. I tried apertures from f2 to f5.6 and I shot between 25 and 50 photos. The reason I don’t stop down more is because I want the background to be very soft. That way I hide imperfections in the background and I like how it looks. If I were to shoot at f9 I’d get most of the box in focus in a single frame. I’m done with this shot though, I chose to just use one of the single shots instead of the stacked. But I have the red version of this deck and I’ll be shooting that soon. I’ll try focus stacking again then.

I don’t know why one of them looks different than the other, but they have the same settings. I guess one of them has a different profile (like adobergb) embedded or something. Anyway, you can still see the glow/ghosting effect. The single frame does not have it. Any way to avoid this? Am I just not taking enough photos? btw, I’m using artificial lighting this time. It stayed the same during the whole shoot.

I still want to know if there is a way to avoid this. Anyone here knowledgeable about focus stacking?

Dang! Hope they add it to the iPad version.

I’m working a lot between Lightroom and Affinity Photo and after I’m done editing in AF I send the photos back to Lightroom as 16bit TIFF files with the Lanczos resample method. Is there a way to make those options the default so that I don’t have to manually change to them every time I export?

I don’t understand how that rail is different. Focus breathing makes the lens “zoom in” as you focus closer, right? It makes the subject in the frame bigger when you focus closer. How is physically moving the camera closer to the subject different? Won’t it also make the subject bigger within the frame? And I was also under the impression that the app was compensating for difference in size of the subject. Again, I’m obviously a noob, but it sounds weird to me that focus breathing could be the culprit behind the ghosting you’re seeing in these tests. I think it’s more likely that the light in the room changed just a little bit during shooting since I was just using natural light from a window. I still have not gotten around to testing this by shooting another stack in the dark with artificial light.

My shots you mean? They WERE shot with a very good lens, yes. Some processing was done to the colors and contrast, yes. But the main reason they look good, I think, is because of the lights I was using. The background is there while shooting, but I take a photo of the background without the deck in it and then I blended the photo of the deck and the one without the deck together. I do that to remove the support I am using to hold the deck up with. And so my goal was to do focus stacks of the decks with all the lights set up and then use that stacked image the same way I use my photo of the decks now, blending it together with a shot of the background without the deck. if you wanna see a couple photos of my setup, go to the last two shots in this thread on Reddit. I know it’s kinda low budget but it works for me. (Yes that is Lego… :P)

This was just a test so I did not care about the background. What I’m aiming for is to maybe use focus stacking for my playing card shots, like these: https://www.instagram.com/52_eirik/ As you can see, some of my shots does not have all of the box in focus. I’m not sure I mind that personally, but I know some of the more dedicated playing card collectors wants more details. But I can only stop down the lens so much. Honestly, what I would love to have the most would be a bellows system like this guy has. But I think it’s a bit over the top for a hobby photographer like me.

Hmm interesting. If that is the case, then I might not be able to use focus stacking since I have lots of tuck boxes with way more intricate details. Thanks for all the help btw!