Focus Stacking: ON1 Photo Raw vs Helicon Focus

If you need to focus-stack a dozen or fewer photos quickly and easily, consider using the ON1 Photo Raw editor. I’m using the 2023 version of ON1 in this article.

If, on the other hand, you want to stack scores of shots with the most capable available software, you probably want to take a look at Helicon Focus. Here’s a link to an article I made on using Helicon Focus.

I often find myself trying out ON1 with a set of stacked shots, since it’s so easy to use. If I like the results, I’m done. If I don’t like the results, then I switch over to Helicon Focus to get the job done.

Select your shots to stack

The first step is to select the photos that you want to stack. It’s critical that your shots have good focus overlap, or the stacking will either fail or look awful. It’s generally okay if you hand-hold the camera, since ON1 can handle misalignment. Cameras that have a focus-stacking feature work much better for getting correct focus overlaps, but you can also make stacks with manual focus.

If you select too many shots to stack, ON1 won’t let you select the “Focus” option until you decrease your selection total. Generally, it won’t let me select more than 14 shots.

The ‘Focus Stacking’ dialog

As shown above, you will get the Focus Stacking dialog to appear after clicking the ‘Focus’ icon. You might not get all of your selected shots to be automatically used in the stack. I used a manual-focus lens in the above stack, and the software de-selected some shots with improper focus overlap.

I always leave the Align Photos selected, since properly-aligned photos will still work, too.

Some ugly image artifacts

If you don’t have a proper focus overlap between all of your shots, you’ll probably notice that not every shot gets selected at the bottom of the dialog. You can re-enable these shots in the stack, and look for potential image artifacts showing up in the stacked shot.

You can un-select shots at the bottom of the dialog (check marks) until you make the unwanted artifacts disappear.

Artifacts are gone after de-selecting some shots

The stack above was actually hand-held, showing how well the auto-align feature can work. I think I had some front-back sway issues while photographing the stack, causing some incorrect focus overlaps; this is why not all of the shots worked properly in the stack. I used a focus-stacking camera for the above shots, but the viewfinder blacks out during the shooting and holding steady is a challenge.

This ON1 stacking isn’t suitable for most macro subjects that require huge numbers of frames to overcome paper-thin depth of focus. It’s much more suitable for things like landscapes or product shots at more normal distances where a dozen or less images will cover the scene.

ON1 and Helicon Focus Compared

Stack 10 shots with Helicon Focus

Stack 10 shots with ON1

If you look closely in the above pair of shots, you can see that Helicon Focus is a more refined product than ON1. There are several small rough spots which I’ve pointed out in the ON1 stack that are absent from the Helicon Focus version.

You’ll find yourself having to use tools like the healing brush to smooth over little defects in ON1 focus stacks.

On the other hand, Helicon Focus cropped a bit more than ON1 and seems to have made a different decision on what to use for the most out-of-focus background.  Helicon Focus is more adept at handling hand-held stacks and compensating for camera movement than ON1, as well.

The white balance is different with Helicon Focus, but that’s easily adjusted after stacking by using other editors.

There are some raw-format photos that Helicon Focus can’t use, but you can easily convert them into DNG format using the free Adobe DNG Converter and then stack this form of raw files.

Summary

If I had to choose, I’d stick with Helicon Focus over using ON1 for focus stacking. ON1 is the simplest and fastest program to use, but it’s definitely more limited in capability and finesse.