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!

How does file format affect focus breathing? That’s an optical property of the lens. I know newer Sony cameras can compensate for focus breathing during videography, maybe even photography, but that is a very new feature that most cameras don’t have. I did not apply any processing on these. Shot RAW and exported as jpeg, then stitched the jpegs. But I did use light from the window, so that could maybe have been changing during some of the shots. As a matter of fact, the most ghosting you see on the last two examples happened on the side of the box with the most direct light from the window. That might be my proble. Gonna try again tonight when it’s dark and I can use only artificial light. Never heard of over stacking before, but I’ll try to keep it in mind as sometime to try. You mean editing in post right? Not camera/lens repair? What kind of hardware would that be? Maybe a tilt shift lens? Edit: my suggestion of a tilt shift lens made no sense as an answer to your statement… though it’s a thing I want.

Here are two more attempts. First one was with mechanical shutter second with electronic shutter. Same settings for both. Same results. Better results, but there is still some ghosting, especially on the right side of the box. I don’t know what’s causing it. Only used 18 and 17 photos this time, maybe that has something to do with it? Does the results usually get worse the more photos you use?

The thing is, I used the built in focus bracketing function in my camera, so I did not have to touch the camera at all while it was shooting. I even used a 2 second timer to let any vibrations dissipate before it shoots AND 2 seconds between each photo. My camera is a mirrorless camera too (Fuji X-T2), so no mirror slap to worry about. I guess there could be vibration from the shutter. I’m gonna re do this with an electronic shutter and see how that goes.

This was 40 photos, shot at 5.6 with a tripod and I still got ghosting. What am I doing wrong?

Any updates on when this basic feature will be implemented?

Hello there. So the story with this image is that I edited the raw file in Lightroom on pc and then somehow transferred it to photoshop on my iPad. But it was a while ago, so I do not remember what file format I used. But I usually export in TIFF, so that is probably what it was. Don’t know why it shows as a PS Cloud Document in the app. Are the small versions not enough? They seem to behave the same as the big one. I’m not willing to give away full resolution photos unfortunately. EDIT: My reading skills are not good, so I missed that Callum might not have seen the original thread. In that thread I posted a couple smaller versions of the file, like Walt.Farrel says.

Okay so it’s not just on my end. I’m on the latest version. (Checked by seeing if there was any pending updates in the App Store) Yeah I noticed the difference in size too. It’s very odd. Dont know if it’s useful information, but I’m on the latest version of iPadOS and I’m using 5th gen iPad Pro 12.9 Just now tried exporting with both png and jpeg formats and those worked fine. Just wanted to check to be sure.

Here we go. First one is a version I exported to the photos app. The second one is one that I exported to Affinity Photo and then exported from affinity photo to the photos app. 7B40F5FD-045D-4633-941B-F2AC8404CD2F.tiff 59A9244B-F827-4A6F-8336-B708BE06D9E5.tiff

I’ll see what I can do. It’s RGB

No it’s happening with other files too. After some digging (because it’s not easy to find the file format in the PS app) it seems to be a “PS Cloud Document” file. But that doesn’t matter does it, since I am exporting as tiff? Im mentioning the file type just in case it matters. It’s 16bit and and the resolution is 5000x4000. I’m not really comfortable with sharing full size photos online though.