pls

1) When resizing a document, unselecting “resample” disables the ability to change the physical dimension. It would be nice to autocalculate the DPI change (assuming aspect ratio is locked). 2) In order to do the above, I need to change DPI instead. Since my goal is to get to a specific physical dimension, I can change DPI until the dimensions are as desired. But the dimensions don't update in the pane, I can only see them once I click OK and choose "Resize document" again.

Hi, Here is a collection of observations/requests for focus stacking. 1) Please provide a keyboard shortcut to toggle source preview. In the retouching phase, it can slow things down considerably to move the mouse over to the tiny toggle button to change the view. 2) Similarly, up-down arrows (or similar) to cycle through source images would allow the mouse to stay over the area of interest where the retouching is going on. 3) When changing tools (e.g. from stamp to zoom and back to stamp), the source image pane always reverts to a state where it is scrolled all the way to the top. This is cumbersome when working with large stacks. Please make the state of the pane "sticky." 4) It seems to me that after the initial stacking is done, I can work with the original stacked images but cannot clone from one part of the working image to another, or choose coordinates from which to clone. After I close the image and reopen, I can clone from any coordinates in the working image but no longer have access to the original stacked images. Is this true, or have I missed something? Are there ways to access the alternate sources? I would like to be able to mix and match these operations. Thanks! Peter

I guess it might also depend on the distortion characteristics of the specific lens. As for which workflow is easier, if you are going with an all-manual approach, I agree with you. It can be hard to determine how far to rotate the focus ring between shots, and to get reproducible results. With a good rail, you can control the distance pretty precisely, and use DOF calculations to determine the right amount of inter-shot travel. Having said that, there are camera control tools out there, e.g. DSLR Dashboard, that can automate the focus adjustment, too (I haven't tried that particular feature of DSLR Dashboard).

I use a rail. It works fine. I can't think of any reason why a rail would make things more difficult for the software. Arguably it should be easier, since the optical path through the lens doesn't change. I'm curious to see counter-arguments. I suppose that if you don't have the rail and lens axis aligned well, that might create a problem for the software. Depending on your mounting hardware, this might or might not be something you need to think about.

crashdump.rtf AP crashed when trying to open a zillion files. I accidentally selected "Open" instead of "New Focus Merge" and selected 139 files. After some time (I walked away after realizing my error), the application crashed. I don't actually have any desire to open 139 files for editing, but: (1) a way to abort the operation would be nice. I just got the spinning ball and did not see any way out, and (2) obviously any behavior other than a crash would be desirable. Thanks Peter

Hello, Running a new focus stack this morning I got some not so great results. These are in high(ish) contrast areas, with no nearby occlusions. Attached is a crop from the result. Note heavy blur along the light/shadow boundaries (there are source images in the stack with these areas in focus). I ran it again after cropping the source images to roughly the same area, and surprisingly did not see the problem. Not sure what to make of that but it gives me hope that the fix won't be hard :). Image alignment, I guess, is likely to be the main difference between the two trials.

One more vote (even though I know they aren't counted) for an option to have larger UI elements. IMO it is by far the biggest usability issue with AP.

Some questions about focus merge: 1) Is there a recommended method for retouching the merge result, i.e. cloning in from one of the source images? 2) Related to above, the palette showing all the source images disappears as soon as I select a tool (even just the zoom). Not sure what to with that palette. 3) Also related, it would be nice to have all the source images available as layers (at least optionally); it would solve question 1 I guess. 4) Are there plans to add configurability to the merge process? It would be nice to be able to tune the process, depending what parameters the algorithm depends on. Though I will say that my first result playing with this is relatively free of artifacts. Thanks Peter

Bumping once in case this was missed.

Bumping once in case it was missed.

Hi, I would like the ability to control the source area for inpainting. My situation: I do a lot of focus stacking. When one shape occludes another in the scene, the one further from the camera gets washed out because the frame in the stack that has the background feature in focus also has a blurry rendition of the foreground feature superimposed (see center of example image). Inpainting would be a really quick way to clean this up --- if I could tell the tool to only use source material from the background feature (e.g. controlled by selection). Right now it often brings in material from areas that I don't want. Thanks Peter

Hi, In the "Resize Document..." dialog, with resampling disabled, the dimension entry fields are greyed out, even if I choose a unit of distance such as inches or cm. The only way (that I have found) to resize to a specific width or height is to change the resolution, requiring either that I do the calculation ahead of time or that I do it by trial and error. I'd appreciate it if these fields were enabled. Also, IMO the "resample" checkbox should be persistent across invocations of this command, or as second best, should be disabled (the "safer" setting). Thanks Peter