Digital Light & Color

Helicon focus can save a processed focus stack as a tif (but it lacks the metadata) or as a dng (with the metadata). When a stacked image is saved from Helicon focus and opened in PWP 8, both as a tif and dng, the dng version is half as bright and slightly color shifted compared to the tif. The tif version closely resembles the image as presented on my monitor by Helicon. Therefore, is it possible that PWP 8 is not processing the dng correctly?

DNG files are basically raw files which generally look darker and duller than processed files. This gives you extra room for recovering highlights and making other changes. Normally, this can be done using an appropriate camera profile during raw processing.

You can use ExifTool to copy the EXIF data from one of the original files to Helicon's output TIFF file. The command line should be something like this:

ExifTool "<pathname of file to update>" -tagsFromFile "<input file pathname>"

where

<pathname of file to update> is the pathname of the Helicon output file (the quotes are required if it contains spaces)

and

<input file pathname> is the pathname of the file you want to copy EXIF data from.

Thank you.