as not to copy wider areas than you need. Often these areas are
just a tiny ‘lighter’ area or line where two objects overlap.
If you copy too much you will introduce unneeded and unwanted
noise (or even a dark halo) into DMap, so look carefully. And that is
the main idea. If you based your finished photo on DMap and copy
PMax areas to overwrite DMap, you will have the best result in
most cases. In some cases you may have to copy large areas of
PMax or almost the whole photo, but you have been given the idea:
copy as little as you can but as much as you need. Also, don’t
forget to use the other individual photo layers instead of PMax,
where needed.
Retouching stacked photos is unavoidable and this is where Zerene
Stacker really shines but any retouching is time intensive, as in: it
often takes much longer to retouch a stacked photo than to set it up
and take it in the first place.
I guess one point is that if you are looking for a slam- dunk
approach to close-up photography, focus stacking is probably not
your cup of tea. As mentioned, it takes time to stack and even more
time to retouch, but the result is worth the effort, in most cases.
I don’t want to turn this into a retouching tutorial, but only to paint
with broad strokes as to what you are getting into when focus
stacking requires retouching, which is regularly. Zerene Stacker’s
retouching features are extraordinary and are getting better all the
time. Here is my general workflow.
(1) Shoot the stack.
(2) Transfer images to Lightroom.
(3) Export Tiffs to Zerene Stacker.
(4) Stack Photos with both PMax and DMap.
(5) Use DMap as your base photo for retouching (right screen) and
select PMax to retouch from in the left screen.
(6) Having selected DMap (highlighted finished DMAp) enter
‘retouching’ and then select PMax to retouch from. At this point I
am retouching the photo based on DMap as base and PMax to use
for overwriting areas of DMap AND any of the individual stacked
layers themselves.