Aduku Stacker vs FOCUS projects 4 professional
Aduku Stacker
aduku.app
FOCUS projects 4 professional
franzis.deSide by side
| Figure | Aduku Stacker | FOCUS projects 4 professional |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Focus Stacking Software | 7.9 (#9) | 8.0 (#7) |
| Alignment | Automatic alignment includes feature matching and subpixel refinement, with options for focus-breathing correction, homography, mesh warp, and manual alignment seeding. | The product advertises precise alignment of all images in a stack. |
| Maker | The terms identify the publisher as Suriyanarayanan R Srinivasan of Aduku Labs, and the site says the product is made in India. | The product page identifies FRANZIS GmbH as the maker, and its imprint gives its address as Richard-Reitzner-Allee 2, 85540 Haar, Germany. |
| Purpose | Aduku Stacker combines focus-bracketed photographs into one sharp image for macro, product, landscape, and microscopy photography. | FOCUS projects 4 professional creates macro photographs with extended depth of field and detailed results. |
| Support | The maker lists [email protected] for questions and support, and says it has no obligation to provide support, maintenance, or updates. | FRANZIS directs software questions to its contact form and asks customers to provide the product version and operating system. |
Plans
In their own words
Aduku Stacker
Aduku Stacker combines photographs taken at different focus distances into a sharp image, for macro, product, landscape and microscopy photography. The free app offers five merge methods: Wavelet, Pyramid, Weighted, Hybrid and Depthmap. Its default workflow processes images at 16-bit and uses 32-bit floating-point merge calculations, with memory-bounded batching for deep stacks. Automatic alignment uses feature matching and subpixel refinement; options include focus-breathing correction, homography, mesh warp and manual alignment seeding. It imports JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, HEIC and DNG, and exports JPEG, PNG, TIFF, linear DNG and depth maps. Proprietary RAW files may require Adobe DNG Converter on macOS. Retouching lets users paint from aligned source frames, erase strokes and undo or redo, but there is no clone tool. Processing is local and does not require an internet connection. It runs on macOS 13 or later and 64-bit Windows 10/11; 8 GB RAM is sufficient for most stacks, with 16 GB recommended for deep 16-bit RAW stacks.
FOCUS projects 4 professional
FOCUS projects 4 professional is a standalone FRANZIS application for creating macro photographs with extended depth of field. Its HQ stacking uses 64-bit calculation, Focus-Boost technology increases sharpness, and stacks can contain up to 1,000 focus planes. The software advertises precise alignment and includes automatic alignment, batch processing and manual retouching. It supports RAW input and outputs RAW, TIFF, JPEG and other formats, with a bracketed HDR merge mode. An Adobe Lightroom plug-in is included. FRANZIS lists the application for Mac OS X 10.7 and Windows 10, 8.1, 8 and 7; the product page also presents it for macOS and Windows. The full version is an immediately available download, and a demo version is linked. The listed Vollversion plan costs €20 as a one-time purchase, with an offer price of €20,00 including VAT and a stated UVP of €99,00. The pricing note says from €69. There is no free plan, but a free trial is available. FRANZIS describes its photography products as suitable for beginners and professionals.