Hey guys! This is Janine from Pangolin Photo Safaris, and today I would like to show you how to
stack several star images on top of each other...in order to create one big star trail with Photoshop.
I posted a picture recently, and I had a lot of questions about it...and I thought I will just quickly
show you how it's done. Let's get started.
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So let's say you come back from a night shoot, and you took a whole range of beautiful
star photographs - in a sequence. The way you generally do that, is with the intervalometer.
Some cameras have it built in...other cameras will need a separate device.
Very often, your remote trigger can also have an intervalometer built in. Check out what you buy
before you purchase it, and you can maybe get a double action out of your trigger, which is quite nice.
So, then you set up just like for a regular start shot. You will have tested your ISO before.
How long you want to expose for? Your favorite white balance...and you'll set the intervalometer
to shoot in sequence, with short time intervals in between. You don't want to keep the intervals too
long, because if you stack the images afterwards, you will have little gaps between the stars...
rather than one consecutive line that goes through. So, I would suggest about a two or three
second interval will be a safe bet. After you loaded the images into Lightroom, you will have
between...let's say 80 and 300 images. If your stack becomes any larger, you're going to struggle
to handle the amount of data, and your photoshop will slow down tremendously.
I hardly edit these images. I will take my last image...219.
Go to develop, and all I am going to do is straighten out the horizon,
which I have done already...and I will adjust my temperature slightly,
to make it a little bit cooler. Then, you can go to your copy button,
and tick whatever you would like to transfer to all the other images...given that it was shot from
a tripod and stationary. You can have them all checked. Say copy. Highlight all the other images,
and paste the changes into it.
So, very little changes to be done. Most of the editing will happen in retrospective. Then
you can go, and you can export the entire sequence together. Make sure you have nice file numbering...
in case there is an image that you're not fond of, that you can look straight for the file number,
and delete it...or simply make the layer invisible in Photoshop. You go and export it. It will take
a few minutes for those amount of pictures to export. In the meanwhile, you can open Photoshop...
and what you need to do in Photoshop, is quite simple. Most of the work is actually
being done by your computer. The higher RAM - I have a 32 gigabyte RAM computer -
the less time it will involve. So, in Photoshop, you would go to file. You scroll down to scripts.
Load files into stack.
You choose the folder that you have exported your files to. Choose the first one. Press your shift.
Choose the last one, and open them up all together. Once that is done, you press OK, and what Photoshop
will do, is to load all the individual images, into one file...into different layers.
Beautiful as that!! Depending on how fast your computer is, this process might take you between 5
and 20 minutes. It also depends on how many images you are importing into your stack.
Right now, we will only see the first layer...and I started shooting these images at dusk, so my first
images are significantly brighter in the sequence. But, given that number one is our first layer, this
is what we are currently going to see here. If you now want to stack them all together, it is
rather simple. You will take the first image - highlight it - press shift. Press the last, and
in your drop down menu all you need to do is go to lighten, and you'll see with amazing speed...
Photoshop is stacking all these images together into one image...showing those beautiful star trails.
Now, it looks very bright. It doesn't look like it was shot during night time. That is because the
images shot during dusk, are currently included in our selection. What you can now do, is deselect the
brightest images, and work your way towards the color that you enjoy. Also remember, these images
have not been edited...and you can still darken it in retrospective. Let's try and take some
of the brighter images out of our stack, and see what happens. Let's take the first 15 images out. There's thirteen.
So, you can see after taking the first 15 images out, our image has darkened significantly. However, we still have detail in the tree, and in the landscape
in the front...which I really enjoy. This is one of the advantages of shooting a stacked star trail,
vs shooting one single exposure. It is now up to you to decide how much detail you would like
in the foreground. If you can't decide, you can also export them individually, by going to file. Export.
Export as.
You decide you would like it as a jpeg.
You say export, and you decide where you would like this to be.
So, you can export different versions of all your layers...and then see which one edits the best.
So, if you decide you would like a little bit more detail in the front, you work your way backwards...
and add some of the layers again...15, 14, 13...and you will get more and more detail in front. I would
keep the very first layers out, simply because they are burning our image. We are losing too much detail...
but, I believe - up to 10 - actually looks very nice. Once you have exported these images, you
can go ahead and import them back into Lightroom, and then continue with the edit of your choice.
So, now we can make sure, that our night sky, gets a little bit darker overall.
To make sure that these beautiful trails become visible. But we can keep on pulling the shadows
out, because we have that information in the foreground, thanks to starting our star trail
quite early in the evening. I would also make sure that you go to your lens correction,
and actually take the vignetting out of the sides. If you shot on a wide angle, you can
also take the distortion out a bit, but I usually find it quite difficult to make it look natural.
So, I generally only stick to taking the vignetting out in retrospective. You can play with the colors,
depending on what white balance you prefer. You can make it warmer and colder. You can
play with your colors individually, which often makes a lot of sense...and you can change the hue
of the night sky, to be less bluish, more magenta, more orange...whatever suits your wall space
Some people really enjoy their star trails a little bit darker. Others really like the light
foreground, with the night sky in the background. That is personal taste. You can bring the star
trail out by pulling the clarity a lot stronger. I still think it is quite a bit too blue. There we go.
...and this is how you start creating a beautiful star trail. If I zoom in here now,
you will see that with some of these lines, it looks like they're almost polka dotted...
and that is because I might have had my interval slightly too long.
You can also see that there might be little gaps in our trails, such as here.
That is when I took an exposure out in the middle, that I didn't like...maybe a car drove through it,
or we had an aeroplane flying through...and you wanted to take that specific layer out. It will
create a little gap. But, if you zoom back - in the overall scheme of things - that isn't too visible.
You can also see shooting stars coming through, however I think that adds to the feel of the
night sky. I really enjoy them. For my personal taste, I would take the mining activities -
here in the back of the salt pans out. I generally use Photoshop for that. I find that the healing
brush of Photoshop is absolutely brilliant when trying to cover up little flaws...such as that.
So, now I want to show you what would happen if you go ahead and edit your star trail,
before importing it into Photoshop. Let's say you take one of the last shots of your sequence...
and you edit it to your liking. You adjust the white balance. You pull the whites.
You make your night sky nice and crisp and dark...and you push a little bit of
clarity across the milky way, because you really want the milky way to show nicely.
You sharpen...and please remember to do your lens correction, to get rid of the vignetting.
Now, when I import it into Photoshop. Into my stack. I have done it for you, so we don't need to wait again.
You will see that the stack is turning out a lot brighter, and I don't mean the foreground...
the foreground is quite comparable, however this night sky becomes a lot more dense...
and it can become so bright, that you're actually blowing out your highlights, and you will struggle
to retrieve the nice dark blue night sky. Even in Lightroom afterwards. Rather pull
the clarity, and make the whites more intense in post-production, than stacking a pre-edited shot.
Secondly, and more importantly, you will see fine artifacts appearing on your image. It almost looks
like a checkered background. I don't know if it is so visible. I am going to zoom in a little bit more...
but you can see - all throughout the image -there is a polka dotted, or checked
layer, running through the image. These artifacts are mostly created
by editing your lens correction, prior to stacking your image in Photoshop.
However, I have also come across them through other edits. They tend to look different.
Sometimes you find a radial artifact. Sometimes you find a jacket artifact. Either or,
I would advise that you to keep your editing - prior to stacking it into Photoshop - to a minimum,
in order to avoid all that effort, and time that you take, to work it through Photoshop, and then have a
mediocre result. You see, most of the work is done by your computer. It takes a little bit of time to
export all the images from Lightroom...and to layer them into a stack, in Photoshop, but the result is
phenomenal...and it is really not complicated. I would love to know if the results look good for you?
If you gave it a try? Please let me know in the comments below if you run into any trouble.
Bye, bye!