CombineZ5

Several people have allowed me to test the program on their 'difficult' stacks, these have prompted me to add several new functions, and improve existing ones. To ensure that all of the examples below work properly, and for the latest bug fixes make sure you have the latest version of the .exe file listed below.

Introduction and Examples

Here is a simple three Frame Stack presented as an Animated Gif. It is of a Weevil, and is one of my very first stacks, tacken when CombineZ was just an idea.

You'll notice that it consists of three pictures each focusing on a different part of the scene. Sorry my pictures are'nt as eyecatching as some of those produced by others they were just taken with a Webcam, or in this case a Board Camera and Frame Grabber.

Now this is the important part with the correct processing these three Frames can be combined into a single picture with increased depth of focus.

Getting Started

Problems Will Occur (June 26th, 2005)
Some more examples added.

Current Status

This is still a new program, it has undergone much testing but there may still be bugs in it so please let me know if you find any, Check the date in the About Box against that below to see if you have the latest bug-fixed version.

Here is the .exe file:
CombineZ5.exe (June 26th, 2005) Turned ICM (Imbedded Colour Management) off.
Just fixed a few bugs found while prepairing new Problem Picture examples above.

(June 25th, 2005)
Yet another new sub menu on the Stack menu, Balance Colour and Brightness, two functions now replace the original single function of this name. The Global one is the old function, it balances the average colour and brightness of the whole frames. Local is new, it balances the frames on a local basis. This new function is slow to execute, and overwrites any DFT filter settings, but on the upside it produces exelent results when the lighting is not constant between frames (however it can produce artefacts if there is no suitable colour there to modify). I have changed both of these functions to use the Active Frame as a starting point, careful choice of this frame can make a big difference.
The three Detail functions now produce better results around the edges, they ignore more of the bad edges of shrunk or shifted Frames.
A batch of inconsistancies in the way the display switched using the Right Mouse button in conjunction with 'D' and 'P' has now been fixed.
A new keystroke 'G' will Goto the Frame whose pixel would be under the mouse pointer on the picture. This is quicker than pressing 'P' twice which neaded a redraw of the Picture and was thus slow with large pictures.

Remember if you do not have fftw3.dll you will need it:
This is a different version (June 25th, 2005) as the other behaved badly with some picture sizes.
Fftw3.zip More information about this can be found here.

And if you are running an older version of windows you will need:
Gdiplus.zip

This software is released under a GNU public license. You may use and modify the code under the terms of this license, but please let me know if there are any changes you would like to appear in the 'Official' version.

The formal part of the manual is almost complete. I will add examples and pictures as time permits.

Introduction and Acknowledgements

CombineZ5 Installation and Files

The Standard Macros

Comparison with CombineZ4

Navigating the Stack

Navigating a Frame

Saving Files and an introduction to Rectangles

Preparation of the Frames for Stacking

Introduction to Stacking

Frames

Rectangles