[cdd29]

Trying to figure out the best method for stacking. Bracketing 7-8 shots @ different exposures, not focus stacking (exposure stacking, not sure if this would be considered HDR stacking or not as I've read there are differences though some consider it the same since I'm not letting the camera do it). Photoshop is hit and miss.. Option is grayed out in Lightroom (have tried importing files, creating new catalogs to no avail). Can't find a plug in for C1 other than Helicon, but it only does focus stacking. Not a fan of HDR stacking options as the quality is unpredictable. Pasting in multiple layers, manually aligning (if needed), playing with opacity in PS is too time consuming, What other options are there?

[acoufap]

Trying to figure out the best method for stacking. Bracketing 7-8 shots @ different exposures, not focus stacking (exposure stacking, not sure if this would be considered HDR stacking or not as I've read there are differences though some consider it the same since I'm not letting the camera do it). Photoshop is hit and miss.. Option is grayed out in Lightroom (have tried importing files, creating new catalogs to no avail). Can't find a plug in for C1 other than Helicon, but it only does focus stacking. Not a fan of HDR stacking options as the quality is unpredictable. Pasting in multiple layers, manually aligning (if needed), playing with opacity in PS is too time consuming, What other options are there?

What's your goal with this?

[cdd29]

One example is taking pics in a low light situation where highs would be blown out, using a shot taken with a faster shutter speed to fill in the missing detail.

Here's an example of what I'm trying to figure out how to do consistently. This is several images stacked at different lengths then merged in PS. A single exposure didn't have the ability to capture everything. The marque was overexposed as an example. Yeah, do what I did before. Problem is it's hit and miss. I've not been able to recreate this with much luck. either the overall exposure is off (usually too dark is if the opacity isn't right), stacking artifacts, double exposures.

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/attachments/12-post-your-photos/538970d1...life-crump.jpg

[ramseybuckeye]

I thought I had used focus stacking in Lightroom, but it must have been with Photoshop. I have also used the HDR with bracketed photos in Lightroom to good results, not cartoonish like a lot of stuff you see. What exactly is grayed out in Lightroom?

[othar]

As I understand it you basically want to do a HDR image, but you don't like the 'limited' choises you have on the outcome in the program you use.
You can use programs that support working with layers (photoshop, paintshoppro, gimp, ....), that way you will have full controll over what areas you want to use from each image, but pp will probably be much more time-consuming that way.

[biz-engineer]

Exposure stacking

It's called exposure fusion. I have an old Photomatix Pro and it does exposure fusion.

One example is taking pics in a low light situation where highs would be blown out, using a shot taken with a faster shutter speed to fill in the missing detail.

Pentax camera does it , somehow, it is one of the HDR modes, but for converting raws it works only in-camera or with PDCU (I guess).

[cdd29]

I thought I had used focus stacking in Lightroom, but it must have been with Photoshop. I have also used the HDR with bracketed photos in Lightroom to good results, not cartoonish like a lot of stuff you see. What exactly is grayed out in Lightroom?

I'm at work and don't have my pc to do a screen grab but it's the menu option that's grayed out: Photo > Stacking > Group Into Stack

[MossyRocks]

I would suggest looking into using the enfuse tool. I believe it is bundled with Hugin for all OSes. I've used it before and it usually provides some fairly reasonable results assuming you don't have too much movement in the image and are shooting from a tripod. This is a shot that I did using enfuse that was composed for 15 different shots spanning -4 to +4 EV at various steps (I think I used 2, 1.7, and .7 with a 5 shot bracket each time).

If going that route use Hugin to do the alignment of the shots and output a set of aligned shots to combine with enfuse. I run enfuse from the command line and for an exposure stack use an exposure weight of 1 contrast weight of .1 and saturation weight of .1. If you use the hard mask setting expect more noise.

[pschlute]

Both Photoshop and Lightroom do a HDR merge, best done with raw files. Very effective.




---------- Post added 11-29-21 at 09:04 PM ----------

I'm at work and don't have my pc to do a screen grab but it's the menu option that's grayed out: Photo > Stacking > Group Into Stack

"Stacking" in LR has nothing to do with the Develop module. It is a tool for the Library module.....you select two or more photos and group into a stack, selecting which photo you want to be on top. Lets say you have a RAW file, a TIFF you created from that RAW , and a JPEG, your final image. You only want to view the finished result in the Library ie. the JPEG, so you stack the other two files behind it.

[stevebrot]

I do my exposure stacking using the stand-alone utility, HDR Merge.

HDR Merge | Download and Info

Works nicely with as a pass-through editor from LR.


Steve

[tduell]

Align_image_stack and enfuse are the tools for this task.

Cheers,
Terry

[MikeMcE]

Affinity has a few different ways to stack . I usually bracket 3 with my KP as this is easy. Then open and stack. I usually do an HDR, but with macros focus stacking works well


Hang up and DRIVE!

[cdd29]

I'll look into some of these options. Here is are examples of how unpredictable Photoshop can be. The first is a stack of 5 images. This is using Open>Scripts>Load files into Stack. Too dark. The second is running it again, same files selected doing the same thing. Too light. Running it a third time would probably be the Goldielocks and be just right, but I don't feel like running it again.

[Oldbayrunner]

I'm at work and don't have my pc to do a screen grab but it's the menu option that's grayed out: Photo > Stacking > Group Into Stack

It's greyed out because no photos were selected but once they are then that is exactly what that feature does in lightroom & Photoshop, stacks the photos into one film strip stack without any exposure processing. So really It is not meant to be used to process bracketed exposures.. You could process them if stacked in Photo Merge or the faster way in lightroom to process bracketed photos is to select your bracketed photos from the grid view and use Photo> photo merge > HDR


Can be done in Photshop too using File>Automate>Merge to HDR Pro

This is using Open>Scripts>Load files into Stack. Too dark.

Both are too dark because the images are only stacked using Scripts.......without any processing as I mention above.

There is more option for photo correction using the Photo Merge in Photoshop vs Lightroom

[Paul the Sunman]

I still don't understand how exposure stacking differs from HDR.