Image Stacking Fungi

Lancashire Lad · #1 (**permalink**) 06-10-2009, 01:43 PM

Prompted by a comment on one of my recent Gallery photos regarding the viability/otherwise of image stacking for tiny fungi, I decided to do a little experiment.

Some months back, I took four photos of a small group of Scutellinia, at slightly differing focal points, trying to get the best overall focus on the group.

At the time, I hadn't dabbled with image stacking software, and, not being happy with the depth of field in any single image - i.e: -

decided to combine the four images in Paintshop Pro, by a process of using layers, and opacity alterations.

Best I could manage as a final combination of the four images was: -

Today, processing the four images with Combine ZM produced this: -

I've cropped all three images for comparison purposes, as there was some image degradation induced at the extreme edges of the ZM stacked image. (Normal with image stacking I understand). There are no other visible artifacts or noise that I can see, and other than the cropping, the image is exactly as produced by the software.

Had I been intending to image stack, when taking the original pics, I would have taken more care over choosing the focal points, and possibly taken more images with less spacing between the focus points. (A couple of soft focus areas in the stack can still be seen).

However, I think the stacked image is substantially better than my original "layered" effort, and shows the potential for stacking, particularly on the smaller species of fungi. (Images best viewed at largest size).

Regards,
Mike.

fairplay · #2 (**permalink**) 06-10-2009, 01:56 PM

Bloody brilliant is all I can say !!

Neil.

ChrisR · #3 (**permalink**) 06-10-2009, 02:14 PM

Looks great - imaging stacking or compositing has been used in entomology for quite a while but I have never seen it on fungi until now

RobSutton · #4 (**permalink**) 06-10-2009, 07:30 PM

Looks good Mike - certainly worth playing around with.

Lancashire Lad · #5 (**permalink**) 07-10-2009, 08:27 PM

Used 4 images stacked to get this today. Definitely has good potential for this type of shot.
(Again, no post stacking adjustments needed other than a small crop to remove the double image artifacts at edges of frame).

Regards,
Mike.

fairplay · #6 (**permalink**) 07-10-2009, 08:42 PM

That is just soooooooh good Mike.

You have shown the two stages of this quite common, but overlooked fungus in perfect detail.

You're definitely onto a winner here.

Neil.

Lancashire Lad · #7 (**permalink**) 07-10-2009, 08:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fairplay

That is just soooooooh good Mike.

You have shown the two stages of this quite common, but overlooked fungus in perfect detail.

You're definitely onto a winner here.

Neil.

Thanks Neil,

I hadn't appreciated before these trial shots, just how easy stacking is.
But now I'd definitely recommend it to everyone.

The Ascocoryne image took about five minutes on my laptop (2Ghz processor, 2Gig RAM), but I understand less powerful machines will take longer to complete the process.

It's more or less a fully automated process - just tell the software which individual images to use, then tell it to "do stack" and hey presto, five minutes later it spits out a fully "overall focussed" image. (There are all sorts of customisation and tweaking controls - but I haven't dabbled with any of that yet).

Regards,
Mike.