Developer’s Description
Helicon Soft Lite Overview
Helping to extend your depth of field by compositing numerous exposures together, Helicon Focus Lite from Helicon Soft is a focus stacking program offering refined and intuitive controls to benefit macro shooting applications as well as landscape, tabletop, and nearly any other kind of controlled photographic scenario. The basic premise of the software requires you to make sequential photographs from a fixed position at varying focus distances, and then the software will automatically combine the images into a single file in order to generate greater depth of field than is possible with a single exposure. An unlimited number of images can be used within each focus stack and both advanced algorithms and interpolation methods are applied to ensure a high degree of clarity and detail, as well as retain an overall natural appearance. The software supports 16-bit color depth files, as well as the ability to work with raw file formats, and it can be seamlessly integrated within existing editing workflows via a dedicated Adobe Lightroom plug-in or using command line protocols for use with other applications.
This download version of Helicon Focus Lite is a one-year license for use on up to four different computers, as long as only one copy is used at the same time.
- Focus Stacking Software
- Achieve Extended Depth of Field
- Unlimited Stacking Length
- Supports 16-Bit Color and Raw Files
- Advanced Interpolation Methods
- Add Scale Bars and Text
- Lightroom Plug-In & Command Line Support
- For Mac and Windows Operating Systems
Helicon Focus is a shareware program. You can evaluate a fully functional version for 30 days. Once the trial period is over the program will add promotional text to the resulting image and will limit its resolution to 4 Mpixels unless you register the program.
There are three types of Helicon Focus license packages available – Helicon Focus Lite, Helicon Focus Pro package and Helicon Focus Premium package. When you purchase Helicon Focus you will receive an email with the activation code. There’s no special installer for each of Helicon Focus license – no matter which license you purchase, please download the latest version of the program from our Downloads page. Entering of the activation code (online registration) unlocks the license you have purchased.
A registered copy may be installed on up to four computers, as long as only one copy is used at the same time. A single license allows unlimited hardware upgrades and/or transfers to other computers.
Helicon Focus is a program for focus stacking. Program selects focused areas from multiple source images and combines them into one perfectly focused image with extended depth-of-field. Helicon Focus Lite Lifetime EXCLUDES Helicon Remote, retouching tools, batch mode & stack autosplitting, RAW-in-DNG out mode, 3D Modelling, 2D Micropanorama, Helicon Remote Mobile
We are getting ready to start our next round of macro classes, and I wanted to mention a class favorite; Helicon Focus Lite. This software performs focus stacking, which radically increases depth of field in your macro image. Imagine photographing a columbine, a flower with a lot of depth. To get critical focus through most of the flower, you would need to combine multiple images. With Nikon cameras you can just set up the Focus Shift in your camera. If you don’t have this, you can manually change the focus and get the same effect. Start with the part of the subject closest to your lens, and change focus points going deeper and deeper into the shot. For this columbine flower my settings were 20 images at F8 with a distance set to ‘5’ in my D850.
I’ve blogged before about combining images in Photoshop, so why would you want to use third party software? Simply because you have more control on how the images are combined, and most importantly, speed! Helicon Focus is way, way faster than Photoshop when combining images. Process speed is greatly affected by your file quality, with RAW files taking the longest. I’ve started using JPEGs for my focus stacking to speed things up. With RAW files from my D850 it was taking around 40 minutes on a souped up iMAC to combine 50 images. With 20 JPEGS in the image above in Helicon Focus it took 10 seconds. I also really like the threshold view Helicon shows as it combines the images (see image above). You can watch where focus is being added image by image. This makes it easy to see if you missed an area in your final shot. You only need Helicon Focus Lite to combine images. It runs $30 for a year license, or $115 to own it. If you shoot a lot of macro and focus stack, you are going to really like this program. The speed increase alone is worth it. If you are interested in some really fun online learning, we just posted some new June macro classes. Come join us!