Slabbing in Zerene Stacker - focus stack batch processing
Hello All!
First things first - Thank you to my Patreon supporters and to those kind folks who have made donations through my donation page (www.allanwallsphotography.com.... None of this would be possible without your generosity!
Visit / allanwallsphotography
In this video I cover the alternative focus stacking workflow known as slabbing. We will be looking specifically at the new slabbing functionality that was released with the most recent data version of Rik Littlefield’s awesome product, Zerene Stacker. I give a brief summary of basic focus stacking before we get into Zerene and go through the entire process from start to finish - including a demonstration of how to retouch stacked images using the slabbing outputs as retouching source images.
If you have ever wanted to try your hand at slabbing but were convinced it would be a complicated and time consuming process, this video will confirm that you were dead right! It is a little bit more involved, and usually takes a wee bit longer than single image stacking - but not by much. And it is a fantastic tool to have on hand for when just can’t get where you’re going otherwise.
Hang on till the end of the video, and I’ll tell you how to get your invitation to join the new Discord forum!
Пікірлер: 44
You pointed out several things about working within Zerene Stacker that I had not considered yet very useful. Thanks Allan, this was an excellent video and I sincerely appreciate the time and effort you put into this.
Hey Allan,
Wow! Stumbled across this video and what an excellent, humble approach you have to sharing your knowledge.
Hi Allan, another thanks from me. I had tried Zerene beta slabbing without much success until your video. In fact, your channel has opened a whole new area of interest for me over the last few months. So much so that I’ve purchased a focus rail, built a tube lens and ordered a Nikon 10x objective from a specialist retailer who said they were in high demand due to a ‘guy on KZread’! Rik Littlefield has also added dust and hot pixel masking in the Zerene beta (see
Allan, I was doing this manually for a few images not knowing about slabbing. It did help. But now that I see it is built in I will probably save hours of work in the future. Thanks.
Never heard of this term "slabbing" but it seems I did this on my inferior pc when it couldn't handle too many photo stacks in Deep Sky Stacker. However, applying this macro and the extent you take it is a different ball game. I love your inferior stack you showed at the beginning. I could live with that, maybe for a time, until that phrase "but Allan would do it better" comes into mind everytime I look at it. You did a brilliant job with the video, overcoming the limitations of computer software - using the video camera to screen share. I get that problem with certain softwares. Your kind of photography makes nature & astrophotography look quite tame. Thanks Allan.
Thanks again Alan, very interesting. No doubt slabbing is one of the next stages for my macro evolution. I have evolved very quick from zero to intermediate in 3 months! These insects 🦟 seem to have taken millions of years. Still trying to perfect diffuser and specimen holding currently though
HI Allan, another EXCELLENT video thank you. With your dialogue it appears you watch my workflow. I was totally unaware of slabbing in Serene but will definitely give it a go. I used to "slab" manually then stack the outputs and get in a right mess when trying to edit. As I am watching the video with a glass of Malbec in my hand I will certainly revisit again tomorrow and do some test runs on a subject that I have trouble with due to "legs everywhere" etc. Thanks again.
Thank you Allan, very informative.
Your timing is impeccable. Looking for a tutorial from someone i sub to this morning, then you upload :).
Just a plug for Zerene - agreed: customer service is excellent. If you reach out to them on a Sunday, long weekend, they’ll get back to you that same Sunday that same long weekend. Have used Zerene for years.
Thanks allan for another great video, bought zerene on your recommendation and im loving it just download the update and giving it a go.
Been waiting for this, thanks!
FYI for those watching this in 2021 and later... I don't know when the slabbing feature moved from beta to prod, but it's in the production version in January 2020. At least on Mac.
Hi Allan,
Greetings from the motherland Allan. I've been using Zerene for a number of years now but hadn't even heard of slabbing until you mentioned it in one of your older videos. Just got home from work and was just about to research how it's done and then up pops your video! The perfect introduction to it all, thanks Allan. You always take time to explain things and why something is the way it is, which I really appreciate. Having a whole set of extreme macro videos to compliment each other is vastly helpful also, the cleaning and preservation of insects is a learning process in itself. I've certainly had 'overlapping' issues etc before so it's good to know that slabbing can help with this.
Hi Allan, I appreciate your thorough review of Zerene Stacker. You've helped me switch over from Helicon. I have a question for you. I lost some of the edges of the image when slabbing and stacking. Is this to be expected or is there any way around it? Thank you!
Hi from France. Thank you, it was very, very interesting!
How did you attach the QuadHands to the Superclamp? They sell the magnetic clamps on Ebay without the base. Thanks in advance
I find a recursive stack method to work best. I will stack 6 images with 2 images overlap on either end, and do that a second or third time to get down to 10-20 final images, then do a normal stack of them