THANK YOU for this clear, organized tutorial! So often I see a promising subject and then it turns out it's just some rando pausing and stumbling and going off on tangents while he figures out how to explain what he does. You've obviously given thought to how to present this information and have spent time on the presentation. Seriously. Thanks.

This is one of the best tutorials I've ever seen on youtube no matter what genre, and I've seen a lot. Thank you!

Ian, fanatsic work! Thanks for sharing. My wife and I have been poking around with landscape Milky Way shots for a about a week now and you've helped a ton with post processing.

FINALLY!!! A clear and precise video on a subject that is accurate, helpful, highly useful, and free of editorial filler. Please tell me you have a selection of videos like this one. I will buy instructional videos from you, just point me to the url! Thank You!

Ian you are the man!!! Thank you for all that you do on this channel. All the best!

just gotta say you have the best intro on youtube. fits so well with your channel

Brilliant. This does do very well. I tried this with 10 photos of the milky way taken at 1250ISO F2.0 @12mm (APSC) and was very impressed with the clean and sharp result.

I find my self coming back to this tutorial video over and over again.. It is invaluable in other types of photography aswell. Kudos and a mountain size thumbs up!

@JesseKoukku

10 жыл бұрын

***** I can't wait to see what you've managed to cook up for your audience :D

Thanks for this, I'll be sharing this video around to a few folks I know that are struggling with noisy milky way shots etc. This was easy to understand, basic, step by step which is great. I've heard that the best lenses to use are the f2.8's only? are f4 lenses not ideal or will they still work for these types of photos?

Wonderful ! All the best from Brazil !

Thanks to Ian for fantastic work!!! Subscribed.

I'm amazed your alignment worked perfectly, I consistently get poor alignment and a blurry stack!

@BillMaryon

10 жыл бұрын

***** Hi Ian, I hate doing things manually, so I created an action to apply my mask to each raw file (to remove the foreground) and save it as a tiff. I then bring these files into deep sky stacker to create the median blend which seems to work much better. :-)

Awesome tutorial, dude. I appreciate it a lot. Keep up with the good videos!

Amazing video, looking forward to try this! thank you very much Ian!

This was great and very details. Thanks for doing this, very helpful and just what I was looking for.

Your videos are extremely helpful, you stick to the point and make it extremely easy to follow, I look forward to trying some astrophotography timelapses, any tips?

awesome - tutorial. Quick and straight to the point! Thanks for sharing!

Clear. concise video, thanks a bunch! Out shooting those stars tonight!

thanks for the nice and tutorial ,Ian. that's really helpful for me to retouching the astrophotograpy ,cant wait to see ur new tutorials;)~

Thanks for your videos from Russia. despite the fact that I do not know English, this is the best channel of those that I saw dedicated astrophotography. P.S. I'm sorry if it is written clumsily, is google translete =)

There is a faster way to copy the masks, at least on Windows but almost surely you can do it on a Mac. Press Alt while you are dragging a layer mask from a level to another and it will copy it instead of replacing it ;)

@PaulWilsonImages

6 жыл бұрын

Great!

@sandroarcodia

3 жыл бұрын

There is also a faster way than this: create a folder, put inside all layers, then create a mask on the folder. Only 1 mask for several images, you edit and delete it in one clic!

this tutorial is amazing! thank you! its exactly what i need.

Great tutorial. Subscribed! Next clear night my eos-m is coming for a drive out to the countryside.

Thanks for the awesome tutorial. Subbed !

amazing, great help and thanks for the tutorial

Hi Ian, thanks for the video it’s a great training aid, however, I’ve have ran into a problem as I try and learn the process. When I do my final masking of the two layers I get two set of the foreground? On my first try I was getting results like yours (glad I saved it). Going back over you video, I do not have the duel circle on my masking brush (2.55), which I suspect is the problem. How do you setup you brush, and how do you get the duel circles again. Ash

Very instructive! Thanks a lot

this is GREAT! thanks dude this is a good editing tip :D

Great video !

Awesome tutorial. Thanks!!!

Hi Ian, Thanks for the tutorial! Super helpful. I am new to astro and stacking. Do you do any basic exposure adjustments (expo, wb, contrast etc) in Lightroom to each image before you send them to Photoshop to stack or do you continue to process in Lightroom after you stack? I am trying to establish a workflow before I go out and do my next shoot. Thanks for your time. Cheers.

Well done video, thanks Ian

Awesome 😁 Thanks for sharing your time and knowledge.

This is what I looking for. Thanks!!

awesome tutorial! In some of the pictures I keep getting random hazy streaks under the milkyway checked the original pictures there wasn't any. I use the averaging technique 100, 50, 33, 25 ...... then the streak occurs could be the lens distortion affecting the alignment of the image?

Ian, thanks so much for the video! I'm eager to try this out. I'm wondering if you've tried this technique on a composition which has, a tall silhouette in it like a cactus. If the foreground blocks part of the sky, it seems like aligning and then median blending would tend to blur out that silhouette. Any ideas?

Hey Ian, great video. Question: Have you experimented on what the optimal amount of shots for this stacking method would be? I would assume that diminishing returns are to be expected. Meaning that stacking 16 shots won't give you twice the amount of noise reduction than stacking 8 shots.

Ian - really great stuff you show here, very impressed with your work. Question i have is do you image stack for everything? so if you were doing a panoramic shot like your "medium format" video, would you have taken multiple pictures (say 4) for each overlap shot to image stack prior to running it through the panoramic creation tool? Thanks Andy

Great vid, learnt a lot!

Thank so much! This will become quite handy!

Great explanation amazing...thanks for your tip!

I wish I had seen this video years ago. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you! Learning about astrophotography.

Great tutorial, tanks a lot!

Amazing job! Thank you

I made my first stab at photographing the Milky Way this week, glad I ran across this video :)

Great video Ian thanks so much!. Just a question if anyone got it : overlap layers to limit the startrail ? CS6 always give me the 40% layers do not overlap. Any suggestions ?

Thanks so much! Quesion, you said, "...there's pretty much no better way..." Is this mode preferable to using Starry Sky Stacker? And, time lapse videos tend to just be single frames, correct?

Just awesome! Will have to learn how to use PS to get such results.

thank you this was so helpful :D

Hi Ian, great video! I am about to venture out and take some night photography as the conditions are ideal, and i was wondering if you were to do say a 10 image stack (for example) what settings would you use? as apposed to a single image photo at f4, 25sec, iso 3200 ??

Do you have to set a uniform (iso,shutter & aperture) settings? Will a mix setting work as well?

Great job. Thanks.

Hi! Thanks for the tutorial, great help! I was wondering though if you had a suggestion for me. Im using Photoshop CC, and when I get to the part where you go to Stack Mode, my option for stack mode is greyed out. Any idea why I can't use it? :S

Hey Ian, I was wondering if you have to have CS6 extended edition to use the stack mode option. Mine is grayed out when I get to that step. Thank you for the great tutorial.

@behemith2d5

8 жыл бұрын

+Ian Norman (Lonely Speck) thanks for the reply. is there an alternate method to get past this point?

cool :) love this video:) what do u think? this noise reduction trick will help me? if i take shots with d5200?

Hey Ian, found this video very informative. However, like many others using CS6 I'm finding that the results of the median smart object alignment on the sky smart object layer cause most of the stars to blur, instead of reduce noise. any idea of what might be happening, or a solution? thank you!

So whenever I do this I follow the tutorial to a tee and when i get to the point where I am supposed to click on layers/smart_objects/stack_mode/Medium, the stack mode icon is grayed out as unavailable, am I missing something?

Is this way better, then stacking with astrophotography stack tools? @Ian: are you gonna make more photography video's? You explaining this verry well.

Super duper brah!

Hi Ian, How do you batch process your day to night timelapses to look so good? If the night photos are batchprocessed those same settings won't be applicable to the transition time and day(sunrise or sunset) images.

That's awesome, thanks for the instructions... but I'm guessing you don't do this for every frame of your time lapse movies, right? How are those processed?

Very nice video. Though I don't understand one thing. In the lightroom part you were talking about images of equal exposure. In photoshop you talk about images with different exposures. What is it now?

Great video. I will try stacking on my next outing. You mentioned you zip files to save space. I am running into a problem. My external drives are getting full 6GB. I save all my process files as tiff. 1) Can I convert all my photo files to zip files? 2) Should I just save the processed files as zip? It appears if I go out and try to save an existing file as a zip that it makes a copy of the file and saves it as a zip. 3) How would this save me space? 4) If I went out and saved a processed file as zip would I then delete the original processed file? My definition of a process file is a RAW file with multiple layers that I have then saved as a tiff file for further editing. Hope you will address these questions. Thanks again for this tutorial.

One tricky thing with the median stack. In my most recent milky way shots a very light cloud moved through the frame. The cloud does not particularly impact any one image but when the median stack is applied the whole area where the cloud moved through is blurred.

Thank you so much.

good job..

Nice, two questions 1. Is it possible to take photos of the milky way in a city? 2.How do you find the milky way in the sky?

What were the capture parameters for each of your 16 images ? (ISO, shutter speed, aperture, lens focal length) ? Thanks. Does image stacking allow you to use a lower ISO, or does it reduce noise from higher ISO ? Thanks !

Do you edit the images in Lightroom first (batch edit) before exporting to PS or do you stack them and then process?

tried this with 16 full size tiffs at first, that was a mistake haha. took like an hour to get to the median stack and then it was mostly blurred. idk if this is going to work for me though, at least with this set of photos, i seem to lose some sharpness in some areas. was just a test anyway, nbd. i did do your other ettr light pollution method too, i like that a lot, actually got some meteors in some pics last night even though the meteor shower wasn't that great. didn't see any with my eyes but the camera caught em.

Awesome tutorial, thanks.. I have a Sigma 10-20 that I have used in the past with mixed results. I need to purchase a new lens, what do you recommend, for a Nikon D200 :)

@RichardHorsfield

10 жыл бұрын

Excellent, thanks for the advice :)

it really is a great tutorial. I have run into a problem following it. When I group the layers together in CS6 and go to convert them to a smart object. All of the layers disappear, and I only have the smart object, so I can't go any further. Any suggestions?

Do you recommend shooting dark frames as well?

Cool!

Hi Ian! :) What settings did you used? shutter speed, ISO, white balance and aperture. Thanks in advance! :)

Hi Ian, I've a simple question about your video: I did not get one point: The images you use are just many photos taken from your tripod always in the same position, with same camera setting? Can I ask you what camera, lens and settings you used to shoot? Thanks in advance.

@jose280714

5 жыл бұрын

As far as I understand yes that's the technique.... as earth rotation goes by the keeping the tripod fixed on the position to maintain the composition will display the starts at different positions, then you have to align then you can use a timer shutter to program the amount of shoots you want ... then later post process in PS are the video explain...

Should have watched this BEFORE taking photos, lol. Still very helpful and I'm going to try this on my next night sky shoot.

Do you have Long Exposure NR turned on? If so does the added time for taking the dark frame make it harder to stack the sky if you are taking 6-10 photos. Don't know if too much rotation will transpire between photos

Does this method works also for current versions of Lightroom&Photoshop ? And can i apply this method on a series of consecutive exposures that were taken in purpose to combine them as panorama ?

Good video man.......My brush shows a cross...not a circle like urs. Can i change this?

HI Ian, this is a great tutorial - Thanks! I am trying to do it on one of my own images and I am at the alignment stage. Unfortunately the auto-align simply doesn't work, it makes some minor adjustments to each layer but nowhere near enough to correct the earth's rotation. I have tried several masks to hide the foreground and several alignment modes but none of them work. Subsequently when I use the median blend mode on the sky smart object it just ends up all blurry, and no better than the foreground smart object. Any tips would be much appreciated, this is really frustrating!

@davestewart9521

9 жыл бұрын

***** Ian, thanks for the very prompt reply! I scrolled down through previous comments and saw someone with a similar problem and a similar response from yourself - so I went ahead and manually transformed 5 layers and the result was pretty good. It was tedious, but after a bit of experimenting it got easier - particularly by using a 'difference' blend mode on the upper layer. This was my result in the end facebook.com/studio2photographer/photos/a.643724405651246.1073741828.642182479138772/880414221982262/?type=1&theater

Hi Ian, fantastic video. I started playing with Astrophotography recently and I truly learn a lot from your tutorials. Hope you don't mind I post a noob question regarding this video. I've recently did a time-lapse shot of the milky way and I have approximately 90 images, each taken at 30sec intervals. Hence, what would be the ideal number of images to use for a stack? Should it be still the 16 or more or less? Many Thanks in advance... :)

@jeromefang

9 жыл бұрын

***** Hi Ian, Thanks for the reply and advice. I'll start playing with 16 shots for my stack. Thanks again... :)

Only a portion of my image (sky) came out nice, the rest is blurred out. Not sure why all the image didn't align properly.

ian that's a great workflow for reduceing the noise in nightphotography,i am also useing a lightpainting method for objects in the foreground(a house for ex.) i also get noise on the object ...do you think i can use the same workflow to reduce noise in the foreground?Thx for this amezing video,it was very helptfull.

@Fgvmoto

10 жыл бұрын

i will thx for your feedback,keep up the good work

great job, what's your gear setup, camera and lens used for the timelaps

@Brightwoodphotos

7 жыл бұрын

One of his videos shows him using a mirrorless camera. Sony I think. But that doesn't matter so much. This process lets you take great milky way photos and such with cameras that don't have the best high iso preformance

@frednorman1

6 жыл бұрын

Good tutorial....

THX BRO

So should I edit the images first, then stack them? Or should I stack them and then edit the final image?

at 5:29 when you paint out the sky mines being painted out as checkered like when I was painting out the ground? Sorry new to photoshop

Can I just take one exposure of the foreground in focus with some light painting and blend that image with multiple exposures of the sky (background) so I can stack the image to reduce noise? I do i have to convert the foreground layer into a smart object since I dont have to stack the foreground parts right? Any help is much appreciated. I would like to prepare as much as possible before I drive 10 hrs to shoot.

Hi Ian. I took 16 images like you have and used your tutorial, however after using Image Stack Median filter, the image looks smudged... as if it's almost doing star trail edit. Yes noise was reduced but except for the centre, there's no sharp image left. What could be the reason? what is the interval between shots you take? I did 15 second exposure (plus another 15 seconds for long exposure noise reduction).

Ian- does this method give better results than using Starry Landscape Stacker? This seems like a lot of work, but worth it if the results are better. Also, why 16 total images? Why not 15?

Ian, I am a newbie to Photoshop, average with Lightroom, is there any way you can share the raw files so some of us can practice the stacking methodology? This would be helpful so we dont have to go off an shoot our own 16-32 shots.

which is better for higher signal-noise ratio: 1. mean/median stacking 2. hdr as in taking same photo multiple times vs exposure bracketing

Thank you Ian. I did notice a lot of color fringing around the stars. Something I see in all of mine of course. At what stage and how do you deal with the color fringing? Being new to the idea of image stacking, I always solve the issue in Camera Raw but if I get out and try this stacking technique, do I just open the finished image in Camera Raw and fix it? Also, is shooting 16 images a standard number to shoot?

@tedraynor9818

9 жыл бұрын

Not worth shooting 1,000 then? ;) Thank you Ian!

@luigigarcia3273

9 жыл бұрын

Hey Ted, I'd give it a try with the chromatic aberration correction tab within the lens correction panel in Lightroom. I'm not sure if the fringing of the stars is actually chromatic aberration, but it looks exactly the same. I think it will work. Just scroll the colors to match the tones of the fringing on your image and check the box to fix that. Good luck!

@tedraynor9818

9 жыл бұрын

Luigi García Thanks Luigi!

Is this still the best way to accomplish this or have you developed a newer/different method?

everytime that i use the stack mode whether its median or mean, all of the stars seem to dissapear and everything blurs out in the sky. not sure why. i have followed the directions as specified.

I'm wondering, would it be beneficial to take a series of photos ranging in exposure from dark to light, kind of like an HDR photograph, an then merge them? I would imagine this would give better value range but would it work?

@kevin71127

9 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the quick reply. So it's a matter of finding that right balance between shutter speed and ISO so the photos aren't too blurry or too noisy? Also, what is the benefit of taking multiple photos instead of just duplicating the same photo and merging?

Hi that`s a great tutorial. Bt in my Photoshop (cc 2014) stack option is non functional. Stack option is there bt after converting my photos into a smart object I cant access stack option. What are the possible reasons, any suggestion?

@exchangedspider

7 жыл бұрын

pirated software?

@kalef1234

7 жыл бұрын

Make sure you're going to Layer->Smart Objects->Stack Mode

Can you do image stacking in Lightroom 6? You say "open in photoshop", but what if we just bought Lightroom 6?