Lots of artifacts in stacked image?

[pozix604]

I heard that this focus stacking software is a great Linux command line solution and tried it out. Stacking a series of shots of a flower, I was disappointed to see a lot of artifacts in the output image:

I took these handheld with a Nikon D610 with the 60mm AF-D macro lens. I'm trying out focus stacking with this software so it could be that my images are poor, but as I've reviewed them, I do see slices of the object in focus going from the front to the back, and none of the images have the artifacts that I see in the output.

So, not sure if software or bad input. This is the link to one of the sets of images I tried: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MgaJs2Pt-E-YszwUtZV0YSW9sfAcY1bB/view

[PetteriAimonen]

Yeah, this is a known issue with the algorithm (issue #8).
The problem is that the background is not in focus in any of the photos, so the widened blur from other images gets mistaken as background detail.

I have some vague thoughts on how this could be handled automatically, but haven't had time to work on them and not sure when I would. Because the problem mostly occurs in blurred background areas, it can be retouched in image editor afterwards, but I agree it is an annoying manual step.

[pozix604]

Perhaps you could post an example set of images along with the stacked image to show what is possible with this tool. It would be useful to see what works and the output when it works well.

Also, just wanted to confirm: the algorithm actually does alignment and resizing of images, right?

[PetteriAimonen]

There is some description in https://github.com/PetteriAimonen/focus-stack/blob/master/docs/Algorithms.md

I agree that some kind of demos would be nice. I'm not much of a photographer myself, I was initially contracted to implement this program and have been maintaining it when I happen to have free time, which is pretty rarely.