Stacking functionality

[MikeFromMesa]

I understand that I am showing my ignorance here, but I have been puzzled trying to understand the purpose of the stacking functionality in AP.

 

I know that HDR processing is coming to AP soon and assume that the stacking functionality is necessary for HDR to work but HDR is not yet in AP so what, exactly, is the stacking functionality for? Focus stacking? Manual HDR? Testing? Something else?

 

[anon1]

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[DWright]

Hi MikeFromMesa,

 

The main use of the stack is for Noise Reduction, Exposure Merging and Object Removal, below are the links to the video tutorials showing how these work.

 

Noise Reduction please click here

 

Exposure Merging please click here

 

Object Removal please click here

[MikeFromMesa]

Ah. I should have thought about object removal as I am often doing some of that manually to remove people walking through photographs.

 

Thank you, both MBd and DWright. I will look into the Noise Reduction and Exposure Merging videos as I had not thought about those uses.

 

UPDATE:

 

I watched all of the videos and now I can say that I am officially impressed. I had expected to have to do a fair amount of work, but AP has made it all effortless, or nearly so.

 

Thank you to both the posters for linking to the videos and to the developers for creating this editor.

[BlauerClaus]

To see the power of Stacking, I invite you to look into a series of photos shown in these discussions here:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/16177-stacking-noise-reduction-optimum-number-of-images/

 

Look for the baby pictures demonstrating the noise reduction dependent on the number of pictures.

 

Best regards

BlauerClaus

[MikeFromMesa]

BlauerClaus

 

After viewing the vimeo videos listed in the earlier post I experimented with my own shots. I took some indoor burst shots with my crop camera (at its highest ISO - 12,800) and some with my FF (at ISO 51,200) and stacked them. The NR resulting from the stacked photos was simply amazing. Of course there was also a bit of loss of color and contrast that I had to adjust for, and it needed a bit of sharpening (via the HighPass filter), but the result was much better than I get using my Topaz NR plugin.

 

The downside, of course, is the need for enough shots for the stacking to work. I will simply have to try to remember to take enough when I am shooting a photo that I know will be very noisy.