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Automatic slabbing

Feature Request

In some cases, you want to break a stack down into substacks, and then stack those. For example we had a user stacking 73 frames that were 100MP each, which takes an enormous about of RAM and disk space. It would be great if the software could analyze your available RAM and disk space and give you the option to automatically slab it for you.

Posted by Ryan Cush ·
8 comments

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Comments8

  • Ryan Cush

    Team•

    Oct 10

    For everyone interested in this feature — please check out the new slabbing feature I just added in Retouch, which lets you create mini-slabs on demand. I’m curious if this meets your needs, or if you think we still need a more global automatic-slabbing feature that gets used when running the stack initially? Thanks for your input!

    • [email protected]

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      Oct 11

      I think a dedicated automatic-slabbing feature would be a very welcome addition.

      I really like the new mini-slabbing option in Retouch. It is useful when I want to select a small group of frames to make a specific correction to part of an image. However, I see this as a different purpose from having a dedicated slabbing feature when initially creating a stack.

      With a dedicated feature, the software could divide a larger stack into smaller sections and combine the results, potentially improving alignment and reducing problems caused by individual frames. I think this would be particularly useful for macro photographers working with large focus stacks.

      I suspect many photographers would find both features useful, as they solve different problems. Mini-slabbing in Retouch is great for local corrections, while automatic slabbing during stacking could help produce a better result from the start.

    • phendley

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      Oct 23

      Ryan - Have not had a chance to try the new retouch slabbing - sounds interesting and will give it a shot next time I have a free morning. However, main slabbing of an entire stack is something I think many of us use. Zerene and Helicon offer ways to do this that are clunky. I normally only do this once I see a big stack is giving problems. My theory - not rigorously tested - is that it applies when the subject is deep (front to back) and the majority of the shots show most of the image BADLY out of focus. Under those conditions, if a part of the subject is bright or very dark the resulting fuzzy light area or dark area confuses the algorithms. Under thos circumstances slabbing seesm to reduce the impact of thoe areas.

      the clunky nature of the Zerene and Helicon processes, is that you have to collect the “stacked slab” images and re load them. I would have thougth this would be easy to automate

  • Simon

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    Sep 17

    In Zerene, I use slabbing very often. Especially when there is much retouching required and for (even just slightly) larger stacks (probably starting at 18 plus pictures). It makes the process of retouching way more manageable if you only focus on a smaller section of the big picture. The result is just cleaner and nicer. It also makes the background a little softer.

    I would definitely want to have the option to retouch the slabs before the slabs get stacked again.

    What I feel is missing in the Zerene implementation is that it does not show you out of what source pictures an individual slab is compiled. I need to count every time or even write down what pictures are in which slab.

  • [email protected]

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    Aug 29

    I have used slabbing in Zerene Stacker, but not very often. The main times I have found it useful are with stacks where there are lots of legs or other fine parts crossing over each other, which can produce ghosting. Slabbing can help with that.

    More often, though, I use a few small, manually selected individual slabs within a stack and then stack those, because it lets me choose exactly which parts of the stack need that treatment rather than slabbing the whole stack.

    So for me, the useful thing would be something that makes this kind of selective slabbing simple, rather than necessarily reproducing all of Zerene's more complicated options.

  • jaxjqa

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    Aug 26

    Yes - very important feature as you get into large stacks. Zerene has this feature with a LOT of options. It’s quite complicated and might go too far against your concepts of a clean and simple interface, but this is a heart issue for sophisticated focus stacking and without it, you’re stuck with the situation you describe above. I think this is important and not having good slabbing capability forces someone like me, who loves what you’ve done with Macro Studio and have made it my core stacking program, to keep Zerene around.

    • Ryan Cush

      Team•

      Aug 26

      Thanks, @jaxjqa ! What is your main reason (or reasons) for using slabbing? For example, Is it to reduce memory usage on big stacks, or is it to create a specific result in the stack? I haven’t used it personally, so I’d love to understand the uses better so that I can design it to be as simple as possible while still producing great results.

      • jaxjqa

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        Aug 27

        I actually use it because Allan walls raved about it and said it makes stacking better on deep stacks (over 150 shots) and makes it easier to edit the stacks in Zerene. I’ve used it a number of times and the results were good in Zerene, but I didn’t do a comparison without slabbing, so not really sure of the incremental value (for a pretty complicated process) Let me spend a little more time collecting my understanding of slabbing and thinking about its importance and maybe some ways to make it a little “easier” than the fairly complicated approach needed for Zerene. I’ll also think about how much value I’ve seen the few times I’ve used it. It’s definitely not a really high priority and I don’t think it would be important to most of us macro photographers. There may also be “workarounds” that don’t cause too much complexity but work well on a 150+ photo stack.