![]() By far the most useful brush is the default or “Detail” brush. This can be a pixel for pixel swap if we use the “Pixels” brush, or we can apply a darkening or lightening effect (very similar to how the blend modes of the same names work in Photoshop) by using the “Darken” or “Lighten” brushes. As the retouching tool is applied to the base image, the corresponding pixels from the source image are “cloned” into the composite image. To retouch, we select the best base image, almost always the best Dmap output, and then select the second, or “source” image. To combine these outputs into a single image is the process of retouching. I want to keep the richer colors and textures, but I also want the detail from the Pmax image. We have, however, accumulated some loss of detail artifact around the pin, the second and third proximal femora, and on the ventral plates of the abdomen. This was the Pmax output from that process:Īs you can see, the detail is still acceptable, but the colors are richer, the textures more apparent, and the little creature looks considerably more vital. After all the slabs had been stacked the resulting Pmax images were first stacked using the same Pmax algorithm. For those unfamiliar with the slabbing process, Zerene breaks the stack of images down into sub-stacks, known as “slabs”, the size of which are user-defined (in this case I ran sub-stacks of 13 images with a three-image overlap). I secured the insect to the side of a 4-0 insect pin (the pin was wider that the insect - and these are the smallest pins I have ever seen) and took a total of 350 focus stacked images using a standard 5:1 setup based on the Mitutoyo M-Plan Apo infinity corrected, long working distance microscope objective.Īfter importing the images into Zerene Stacker, a slabbing run was performed and this resulted in about 40 Pmax outputs. It was a difficult photograph to make because of the amount of fine detail, the translucency of the subject and the challenges posed by its tiny size. The creature was dead but relatively clean and very fresh. I was lucky enough to come across a minute chalcid wasp during a recent outing. To make my point, let us break one of these processes down a little further. ![]() The differences between them are subtle, but it is the subtle improvements that yield the most pleasing final images. If you click on the image to view at full size, you will see that each of the images on the left are the pre-retouch Pmax outputs, the pictures in the middle are the best Dmap stacks, and the remaining images are post-retouching. ![]()
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