Zerene gives the best final image by a large margin and the in camera stacking is noticeably better than Olympus Workspace. I have compared Zerene with Olympus Workspace and Olympus in camera stacking, by stacking the same bracketed images with all 3. Try them both to find out which interface you like the best and to decide if their output is worth the purchase price.
#Zerene focus stacker compared to helicon focus free#
You can try both programmes for free, as each offer a free 30 day trial. The personal edition of Zerene is currently $89USD for a lifetime licence and the lite version of Helicon is $115USD. The advantage of the Helicon approach is a simpler workflow.īoth programmes come in personal, enthusiast, and commercial variants with Zerene currently slightly cheaper in each version. The advantage of the Zerene approach is that it leaves raw conversion algorithms (and their updating) to the specialists. Zerene's philosophy is to let the user use an external raw editor (Lightroom, Capture One, etc.) to convert raw files to 16bit TIFF files which are then imported into Zerene to be stacked. One of the major differences in workflows is the way they handle raw files. I have tried many different softwares for photo stacking over the years and not a single one even comes close to Helicon. Helicon has a more user friendly interface.
The end results from either programme will be indistinguishable but their interfaces and workflow are different. The reason I do the stacking at home is mainly because, in the field, I don't know if 8 frames are the right number. Thats where Helicon Focus came to my rescue.
I've used the focus bracketing on fungi subjects, but done the stacking back at home (using Zerene rather than Helicon). In my personal experience shooting product photos, Photoshop could not produce results I was happy with. Both do a very good job of stacking and offer the ability to edit the stacked images to correct any small stacking errors. Thanks for posting this - very helpful and good to know that the Olympus internal stacking works. There are two major specialist stacking programs, Zerene Stacker and Helicon Focus.
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