Skylum, the creator of Luminar Neo have announced another extension to the Luminar Neo package. Luminar Neo is an advanced photo editor that provides a range of powerful editing capabilities for those who are unaware.

In addition to the inbuilt editing capabilities, Luminar Neo has the ability to run extensions (created by Skylum) that expands its functionality. A number of extensions have been announced that add additional functionality including (but not limited to) Noise Reduction and HDR editing.

The latest extension announced for Luminar Neo brings Focus Stacking functionality to the photo editing package.

This extension allows users to focus stack up to 100 source images and the source images can be automatically aligned. Lens and chromatic aberration adjustments can also be applied to the source images before a single picture is outputted with a greater depth of field than any of the individual source images.

Without going into significant technical detail, the extension analyses each image and aligns them based on key points of overlap in the source images. It then splits each source image up into smaller tiles and analyses each tile to determine which section (tile) is most in focus, it then combines all of the in-focus tiles to create an image that has a greater depth of field than each of the individual source images.

Example Images

Below is an example banner image provided by Skylum, I have also prepared an example using one set of my source images.

I do focus stacking on a semi-regular basis as I am often working with my Sigma 150mm f/2.8 Macro (through an F Mount to E-Mount Adapter) and a Raynox DCR-250 (magnifier) and as such the depth of field is horrible (super shallow meaning little is in focus). In the example below I took 12 images of a jumping spider with the focus point slightly different in each and fed these through the extension, I have presented this as a comparison with the left side being one of the individual 12 images (where the face is more in focus) compared to the focus stacked version of a jumping spider, apologies for those who don't like spiders!

In doing the focus stack, I put the photos into the extension, picked a reference photo and turned on chromatic correction, I made no other changes (beyond exporting to JPEG), resizing for web (200px long edge), and running through JPEGMini to reduce overall file size (which is my usual practice for web stuff), i even left in the dust spots et al…

More Information

Skylum is having a Halloween Sale which will run from October 25th (EDT 11 pm) through to November 1st EDT 3 am. The special prices during this period (all USD) are below:

• Explore Plan (yearly subscription)
Luminar Neo + Season Collection for $79

• Pro Plan (yearly subscription)
Luminar Neo + Season Collection for $109

• Lifetime license
Luminar Neo + Season Collection for $119

If you want more information, you can click through any of the links in this post, or can find out more information about Luminar Neo and the extensions by clicking here.