Most of the existing stacking programs offer more than one
technique for getting results. Helicon Focus and Zerene Stacker
both offer two main ways to stack. However, in my experience, only
Zerene Stacker’s (ZS) two techniques are radically different from
one another and only ZS can handle very fine overlapping hair or
bristles successfully, albeit by sacrificing a tiny bit of color
exactness and by increasing noise somewhat.
Zerene Stacker offers what it calls DMap and PMax stacking
algorithms. DMap is more or less what the other stacking software
on the market offer and most programs do a decent job. However
PMax is to my knowledge not offered by any other software and it
really shines at reproducing fine detail, and this is where IMO the
other software falls down.
And although the two methods can be seen as alternatives,
choosing one method or another, the best thing to do is to run them
both and combine them. And there is a particular order in how to
combine them. Zerene Stacker has a choice to run both PMax and
DMap together. This takes longer, of course, but will produce the
best results. The flow is simple:
THE BASIC IDEA
The program fist calculates PMax and automatically saves it. It then
proceeds to calculate DMap which at one point in the calculations
requires you to set a threshold (a slider) that indicates how much
fine detail you want to preserve and how much of the entire photo is
irrelevant noise. While you may experiment with this slider, I tend to
set it from high to very-high, and like the results. Once both of these
methods are calculated, base your final photo on the DMap by
selecting it (highlight) and then entering the retouching mode. Once
it has displayed DMAp (right screen) for you to see then select
PMax (highlight finished PMax file name) in the left screen as the
main photo you will use for retouching ‘from’. So you have at this
point PMax in the left screen and DMap in the right screen.
Now carefully inspect DMap (right screen) for any problem areas,
keeping in mind that any part of DMap that you can preserve
unaltered will give you better color and less noise. With that in
mind, when you find areas in DMap that are incomplete or show
artifacts, using the computer mouse, carefully overwrite just those
areas (from PMax onto DMap), trying to keep your cursor small so