Breaking free

[billtils]

This was an almost stray bloom, a little detached from a quite tight bunch of carnations. It is illuminated by natural light from the window on the right and the background is a plain wall. The stems/bud at the top left were not edited out, in order to give some context and break from the plain background. The final image was produced by a focus merge of 5 shots; the softness at the edge of some of the outer petals is how they looked. C&C welcome of course.

[Mike Buckley]

A very creative composition that works really well. Attractive colors that have pop but appear natural.

Take a look at the ghosting and soft halos that are displayed around the stems.

[Round Tuit]

Lovely.
+1 to Mike's comments.

[billtils]

Thanks Mike and Andre. Yes, I had noticed the artefacts around the stems but was content to leave them - for now at any rate

[IzzieK]

As I had lost my favourite EXIF viewer, I cannot see your settings. Anyway, can you tell me how you do your photomerge? Is it in Photoshop? Do you shoot continuously then merge your photos in PS using Scripts? Just asking...

The flower is very focused. I like your composition. I cannot think on my feet on the field most of the time so I am asking.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[billtils]

As I had lost my favourite EXIF viewer, I cannot see your settings. Anyway, can you tell me how you do your photomerge? Is it in Photoshop? Do you shoot continuously then merge your photos in PS using Scripts? Just asking...

The flower is very focused. I like your composition. I cannot think on my feet on the field most of the time so I am asking.

Thanks Izzie. My main editor (and library manager) is Capture One Pro, with some other apps that are called as external editors for specific tasks. These include Affinity Photo which was used here. I took five shots, with the camera on a tripod, manually focusing from front edge to rear edge of the bloom, and with the 90mm Tamron macro lens, then processed with AP's Focus Merge tool. I also used AP to remove some stray vegetation. The capture was indoors - the flowers are in a bouquet.

[IzzieK]

I asked because last time I did that focus stacking, I used live view on my Nikon. I ended up burning my chips inside my camera with the mirror in the up position. Cost me $200 + shipping and handling. Thank you. I will try buying (or asking hubby to buy me some flowers from the store..) It is easier to photograph with the right lighting. Thanks for the info.

[billtils]

I asked because last time I did that focus stacking, I used live view on my Nikon .... Thanks for the info.

Izzie - I focused using what I could see in the viewfinder. I don't use live view a lot - no special reason for that though. Glad you found the info helpful.

[Dave Humphries]

I can't really offer anything beyond what's already been said, although I might try a slight crop from left edge that just shows three buds from top left corner.

Sorry to go off topic Bill, but for Izzie and others ...

As I had lost my favourite EXIF viewer, I cannot see your settings.

Is this what you lost Izzie?

http://exif.regex.info/exif.cgi

It's available again, at least for now.

Albeit slightly more involved to use (now seems to require manual copy and paste of image url and click the "I'm not a Robot" checkbox*).

* and for anyone interested in how that works, view this from 3:48 - although the whole thing is only a (fascinating) 5 minutes 19 seconds.

Cheers, Dave

[JohnRostron]

A beautiful image. I find the focus stacking in Affinity Photo is easy to use and effective. It is also easy to paste in part of one of the component images which would probably get rid of your halos.

John

[billtils]

Thanks Dave. I did try that, along with complete and partial cloning out of the buds/leaves but overall, decided to leave it more or less as posted here. It started out as another grab shot taken for fun, but then I was drawn in by the flower head which came out much better than expected.

[Wavelength]

Beautiful composition

[IzzieK]

Thanks for the further info for my attention. I appreciate any help that I can get as I am just getting my groove back after losing my inspiration somewhere between Chesterfield and Reno, Nevada.

[billtils]

A beautiful image. I find the focus stacking in Affinity Photo is easy to use and effective. It is also easy to paste in part of one of the component images which would probably get rid of your halos.

John

Thanks John. Yes, the focus merge tool is indeed easy to use. If/when I go ahead to clean up the image there are a couple of options I have used before and know will deal with the halos.

[DanK]

A beautiful image. Very nicely composed, and excellent lighting.

I am a bit puzzled by the halos. They appear in various parts of the image--for example, there are more subtle ones adjacent to some of the edges of the flower--but they are quite variable, and I wouldn't have expected so much along the primary stem. On the other hand, most of my stacked images of flowers are against black backgrounds, and that may be an important difference, depending on how the software works.

Have you tried stacking this set with another software program to see if the problem replicates? If you don't have other stacking software, I would be happy to try it in Zerene, if you want to put the raw files in a dropbox or other cloud location.

[billtils]

A beautiful image. Very nicely composed, and excellent lighting.

I am a bit puzzled by the halos. They appear in various parts of the image--for example, there are more subtle ones adjacent to some of the edges of the flower--but they are quite variable, and I wouldn't have expected so much along the primary stem. On the other hand, most of my stacked images of flowers are against black backgrounds, and that may be an important difference, depending on how the software works.

Have you tried stacking this set with another software program to see if the problem replicates? If you don't have other stacking software, I would be happy to try it in Zerene, if you want to put the raw files in a dropbox or other cloud location.

Thanks Dan. I was a wee bit surprised too, as the usual suspect - sharpening - was not a factor and I've not encountered this with AP's Focus Merge tool. However, it didn't bother me enough to do anything about it at this time (it is on the too do list) and the flower head is long gone.

[DanK]

Thanks Dan. I was a wee bit surprised too, as the usual suspect - sharpening - was not a factor and I've not encountered this with AP's Focus Merge tool. However, it didn't bother me enough to do anything about it at this time (it is on the too do list) and the flower head is long gone.

I don't find it all that bothersome in this case either. I'm just curious. In my experience, halos are the most common and sometimes the most vexing difficulty in stacking, and I'm just curious how various algorithms stack up (sorry!) against each other. Zerene, which I have used for years, has two algorithms, DMap and PMax. DMap does a better job of preserving colors and textures, and it's my default for flowers, but it is inferior to PMax in speed, preservation of detail, and severity of halos. So I often do two composites, one with each, and paint from the PMax to the DMap where halos are bad. Sometimes that works better and faster than painting from individual images in the stack.

[billtils]

Thanks everyone for your comments, which were very welcome and most helpful. I processed the set of 4 originals and edited the resulting merge. I am pretty sure that the halo was a sharpening artefact after all

Anyhow, here's the resulting image.

[Mike Buckley]

Removing the artifacts really works well for me. However, removing the vignette makes the image less appealing for me mostly because the background becomes too plain, less interesting and gives the image an overall appearance of less depth.