Focus stacking on mac

[Fedgrub]

Hi all,

I don't have a version of PS on my Mac so I can't do focus stacking.

Anyone know of a good program (not looking to spend rediculous amounts of money, but happy to pay for something decent) that can be used to focus stack on Mac? I have Lightroom 3 but as far as I'm aware, it doesn't have this feature.

Thanks

[Ged]

Helicon Focus has had some good reviews.

[arthurking83]

Yeah .... Helicon is supposedly good. Or Zerene(Stacker) is also as good, if not better in some way.

Haven't tried them as yet, as I'm still using CombineZP(Win only), which works brilliantly if I don't stuff up the focus shift amount.

Had a look at the other freebie that I know of, and it's also a Windoze only program ... and I don't use Mac, so can't help really.

Two things to note about Zerene and Helicon(this is why I'm yet to try either).

Price and support are a hard one to decide upon.

Zerene is cheaper for personal use, but doesn't have free updates for major releases, that is, you need to pay an upgrade fee from v1.x to go to v2.x in the future.
Helicon is more expensive to begin with, but they say lifetime free updates to go with that!!

I reckon they'll both do a similar good job of your stacking needs, as long as you supply a decent set of images to begin with tho.

If you had a Win environment tho, you could have tried CombineZP, which has given me two really good images, with almost no real effort.
it's only when I tried to do more and tried harder to get it right, that I stuffed it and I couldn't get it to stack the set properly!

But I also am using a very obscure lens type and model/make, and also trying a few test techniques with the bellows too.

OK, I just had a quick search and there are a few freebies in the Windows domain, but none that I've seen for the Mac environment.
(but my search was limited).
It seems that the two pay for programs of Zerene and helicon are as far as my limited mac knowledge can travel .. sorry!

[Fedgrub]

Looked at Helicon and it looks good, I might go with that. Thanks all!