Double stacking with CombineZP

[The QCC]

In the never ending quest to get cleaner and sharper images I tried double stacking.
The specimen is a single grain from a Gabbro thin section specimen. Ten photos were taken at varying focus points and stacked with CombineZP. The two best output frames were then stacked again by CombineZP.
Photo 1 shows the first frame and the last frame of the 10 images that were stacked. The "All methods" option was used to process the stack and the two best output frames selected for restacking were Pyramid Maximum Contrast and Soft Stack.
Click the small images to zoom and pan larger images.




After restacking using "All methods", the Pyramid Maximum Contrast frame was selected as the best output.


In my view, there is a distinct improvement in clarity and detail in the final image.

Is it worth the extra time to double stack?
You be the judge.

These are download links to much larger images.
The four images 2000 x 1300
The final double stack 4600 x 3300
Details:
Canon 5D, Meiji PH 2.5x, LB-592 with crossed polars, 20x obj.
Stacking by CombineZP
No post processing

[gekko]

Nice results and useful to keep in mind. Thanks for posting.

[Manfred]

QCC,
again and again I tried all methods to stack with CZP in order to get best result, my favourite method is "all methods".
Did you try ever "www.picolay.de"?

[The QCC]

Have I tried

www.picolay.de

?
No, but I will.

A note about CombineZP. The "All methods" does ALL of the macros and stacks the result.
The image you see after All Methods is Do Stack. Use the Up Arrow (Cursor UP key) to go up the stack and see each macro output. Five up arrow clicks and five down arrow clicks navigates the stack.
Select the best output, draw a box around the desired area and use "Save Rectangle as" to save the best output.