Basic Photoshop Milky Way Stacking & Blending Tutorial

In this Beginners Guide to Milky Way Post Processing video I go over my simple stacking and foreground techniques in Lightroom & Photoshop. This video is meant to help you understand the stacking technique to remove noise as well as blending your foreground and milky way exposures together to make more dynamic images.
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[@brianjordan8990]

I just found this while searching how to stack in photoshop. I know its a few years old, but man did you help me out. Thanks for doing this.

[@frednorman1]

One of the most confusing videos I’ve seen on this topic

[@EddyNewhope]

Great tutorial. Thank you!

[@darkskyimages5911]

Very informative, thank you! 🤝🏻

[@troyliposec9931]

So good! Really enjoyed it and hope to improve upon my Milky Way shooting with this way of stacking. Thanks Steven!

[@joelcito84]

Good work. Thank you. Definetely keep this video in my favorites to try it and compare with other techniques

[@manmachinenature5111]

Hi Steven, thanks for awesome tutorial!

[@stevenjmagner]

Thank you, Kahfi!

[@arnabdas9117]

thank you for a good tutorial. I have two suggestions, 1. for the sky exposure, as 24mm focal length had been used , as per 500 rule, shutter can be around 20sec. So, it can bring the iso down to 5000 as well as the noise. 2. Luminosity mask can be use to blend sky and foreground.

[@Chiragupreti]

Nice work Steven.

[@OverlandPriority]

This is fantastic Steven

[@stevenjmagner]

Thanks so much, Aim!

[@dariordz688]

So this was so helpfull! I'll try this technique in my next travel! I can't remember if at the moment of this video this was already a feature of PS, but when you need to mask out the foreground now you only have to create a mask layer, double click it and then PS opens up the refine edge mask tool, that will auto select all the things you need, manking the last part of this tutorial faster and easy!

[@Gordonlanguam]

Thank you for the tutorial! It was really helpful

[@abodh79]

Thanks for making this video! I followed your method as is but I am getting trails...not sure why

[@senaritradutta]

@steven I did not get one thing why did u create a mask on foreground for sky layer and then do a alignment and median stack ? u cn separately stack sky and foreground layer and then mask the two layers to replace the foreground part

[@optimum1987]

Hi...this method had the same results as starry landscape stacker?

[@michaelsimmons7722]

Hi Steven, Great video with lots of information. One quick question, when I do this my snow capped mountains end up having a black border on them, how do I eliminate this? I have tried using the paintbrush like you have taught but it doesn't seem correct by darkening the foreground and blurring the image. Any suggestions would be great!

[@Lidia_Es]

Hey man, I just went out to the mountains, out in the middle of nowhere, milk way in full view just like your pictures but going more horizontal. I have a rebel t6i w/ 18-125mm lens and it did not capture the detail and light that yours did. I’m extremely discouraged, because I know my rebel mirror inside is at least 2x smaller than yours. Does that have a lot to do with the light captured? I was at f3.5 200 ISO 30s exposure. Should I invest in a DSLR with a higher resolution? Will that help with the amount of detail and light captured?

[@pmoiteiro]

The mirror is not 2x smaller, and the mirror has little to do with it. Your Canon T6i is a crop sensor camera, if you put in a lens designed for full frame cameras, the sensor in your camera, which is smaller, will crop the image by a factor of 1.6. So, effectively, your 18-125 will be the equivalent of a 28.8 - 200 in a full frame body. The mirror just reflects the image coming through the lens so you can see it in the viewfinder. Though not ideal, you can still use your camera to shoot night sky photos but you won’t be able to at such low ISO values as 200. The stars the author uses in this video were shot at 12500 ISO. If you use a shutter speed of 30 seconds with your lens, you will also capture some star trailing. To avoid that, you can use the 500 rule, in which you divide 500 by the focal length of your lens and it gives you the maximum time in seconds that you can leave your shutter open to avoid star trailing. So let’s do some math: 18mm x 1.6 (crop factor) is 28.8 and 500 divided by 28.8 is 17.36, which means your slowest shutter speed should be no more than 17 seconds.

[@s4r34l]

Hey there! Thank you for your video, very informative stuff! I just wondered if you have any thoughts on stacking using a program like Sequator before blending the foreground and sky images? Do you have any thoughts of advantages or disadvantages to doing that over just stacking in Photoshop? Thanks!

[@fishymk7558]

When I hit stack mode median it blurs out my sky instead of the foreground. Any tips on this?

[@kurtfrancois4461]

I finally met someone who shoot the MW at ISO 12,800 ! ;-)

[@worldwide_wes]

How do you focus the foreground?

[@hudibitekthesecond3235]

Around 7:40 I can't seem to make it work, a shortcut you mention that shows your brush moves in red just won't work for me and I couldn't even find it in the keyboard shortcut menu. Can someone please tell me where can I find that option (doesn't have to be a keyboard shortcut)?

[@f2.8-]

Great tutorial man. I've just discovered your channel and subbed. I noticed you used the median stacking mode. Normally when I shoot the moon and stack the images I use the mean stacking mode after auto aligning the images in PS. I have never shot the milky way before, but I plan on doing it soon. Have you tried both mean and median and what are the differences between them for milky way photos? Thanks.

[@claytonbussanich1069]

Hey I had a question. Around 5:25 you mentioned that by enabling profile corrections, you got a "moray" effect that you didn't like. I was wondering why you enabled it then, and if you could explain the effect it had a little more in depth? And then I just wanted to thank you for making awesome tutorials, I'm really excited to attempt taking some star photos later this year!

[@stevenjmagner]

Hey Clayton! So the issue is moire and it predominantly occurs when stacking high ISO, low light images. There are other instances where fabric patterns cause it too, but for this image its obviously a landscape issue. The reason I was able to apply the lens correction and avoid the moire issues in the foreground is because I took those long exposure foreground shots as well. It doesn't always work out perfectly, fortunately I was able to recover this image. Beyond this explanation I don't really know a heck of a lot about what causes moire. Here is an article i came across that has a bit of information: starcircleacademy.com/tag/moire/

[@claytonbussanich1069]

stevenjmagner Okay good to know. Thanks for sharing!

[@zeenuhhxx]

Awesome work thank you! Btw, how did you take the intro to this video - the slow pan movement?

[@zeenuhhxx]

also, was wondering why median and not the other stack mode options? and why does this option get rid of soo many stars?

[@atanupalit6337]

Thank you Steven for the tutorial. I have a question though. I don't have any star tracker. So if I want to take 20 or more milky way pictures to stack how do I compensate for the earth's rotation?

[@stevenjmagner]

I use Starry Landscape Stacker to do just that. I own a tracker but haven't used it in years. I have tutorials on both using Photoshop to manually stack exposures as well as using Starry Landscape Stacker. If you are on PC, Sequator is another option for stacking images.

[@atanupalit6337]

@@stevenjmagner Thanks. Will definitely look into it.

[@pcmadusha4781]

What if we stack first and edit lightroom later

[@bobonikita]

That's why I like single shots. It's nice to see good shot taken in simple way, without all these combinations in PS or LR which many times are creating fake final effects.

[@stevenjmagner]

This comment is akin to me going on your channel and saying "That's why I like dogs. Owning a cat isn't much different that not owning a cat, and they only show up when they want something." Does that mean you're going to stop producing cat videos just because I don't like them?

[@bobonikita]

@@stevenjmagner More post production = less photo in photo, that's all ;) It's not about you, but about today's photography. In my opinion, when someone will achieve good photo/final effect in more simple way, then he's better photographer - in the traditional sense of the word.

[@simm7531]

@@bobonikita Photography is an art. When people start imposing "rules" on it - it stops becoming art. Anyway, this video is for removing the noise that doesn't exist naturally so you shouldn't be disappointed.

[@stinkfinger1942]

@@bobonikita It's a bit hard to capture a deep space object in a single click...

[@GiuseppePipia]

@@bobonikita It might be an opinion, but there's no need to bash on the other because of it. Don't want the post production? Then go to a dark sky reserve, with a very fast lens and a star tracker to get over 1 hour of exposure at low noise level and the hope that in that hour nothing bad happens. Cost of that? Perhaps a couple thousands of dollars, at least! Photoshop? Pretty cheap over all. Same result, different methods. Discussion's over.

[@shutterpp1108]

Hey Steven, why don't you use 10x the same picture for the sky? What's the advantage of using different images?

[@mattiaferraboli5715]

The noise from high ISO is random, so you'll have a different pattern of noise for each photo you shot. The median blend mode takes advantage of this phenomenon to eliminate the noise itself. If you try to duplicate the very same image 10 times and belnd them in PS, nothing will happen because the lack of differences in the photos.

[@shutterpp1108]

@@mattiaferraboli5715 i see, thank you

[@murataksu6496]

Hi Steven, It's great video honestly! My question is did you take shot 14 pictures with same settings?

[@AlexT1212]

After i apply the Median stack order my stars are all blurry. I shot 7 photos at 20sec each at iso 8000, is this due too to much movement in the stars?

[@stefanobellini6464]

Hi Steven fantastic tutorial, I have a question ... at 12.35 minutes how do you combine background and mountains? I see you do a keyboard command I think, but I don't understand. could you help me ? I have to do a blending of a sunset with some grain in the foreground.

[@stevenjmagner]

Hey Stefano, thank you! So I had to go back and watch the tutorial again and it looks like at this point in the edit I have my sky as the front layer and the foreground as my back layer (a bit opposite of what I may do now, but still not a problem). Basically I made a selection of my foreground and added a layer mask to my sky. Because when the mask was added it exposed the foreground first, I hit Command + i (Control + i on a PC) and it inverted the mask, showing the stacked sky and the properly exposed foreground. Make sense?

[@thomasobez1718]

Hi, I use photoshop cc 2019, on windows, and I can't find the shirt cut for showing the red overlay when I paint wish brush to select the foreground...... At 7.45min Thanks if you can help me haha

[@bikramghosh1]

Hi Steven, is there any chance you can share the EXIF of the sky and foreground images. Trying to start shooting astro and not entirely sure about the variables to consider. Thank you.

[@stevenjmagner]

Hey Bikram. These variables change depending on focal length, foreground lighting, moon phase, light pollution, et al. A good start (but not a rule) is to divide your focal length by 500 and that is how long your shutter speed should be open. The more you shoot the more you will realize that there are slight star trails and there is another measurement out there that is more precise to fix this. For foregrounds, I will usually (assuming there is no moon and no foreground lighting) shoot a 4 minute long expo around 800 ISO and f/4. I will take 2-3 exposures of this and stack them in photoshop.

[@oirvine]

@@stevenjmagner I think you mean divide 500 by your focal length.

[@stevenjmagner]

@@oirvine yep, thank you for the correction!

[@ArtHeld]

Great tutorial! I've always struggled to make the high-iso stuff look decent. I'm eager to give this a try next summer. Do you have a high-res version posted somewhere? Also, have you tried using any of the newer selection techniques to get around the trees more accurately?

[@stevenjmagner]

Thank you, Art! So I have a few methods to blending my milky way skies with my foreground. In fact this particular shot I blended in a blue hour foreground with a pano milky way as well. This high iso blend was the same night and I was really just testing out the noise handling of the Mark 4. Here's a dropbox link to the stacked image above: www.dropbox.com/s/j5933ycmzcoh9yw/easternsierras_marshlake_6_12_18-1.jpg?dl=0

[@ArtHeld]

Thanks! That is a very nice shot. Your work on the foreground is amazing.

[@stevenjmagner]

@@ArtHeld Thank you, Art! Here is my version with blue hour blending as well: www.dropbox.com/s/elafacleprq1tkn/easternsierras_marshlake_6_13_18-1-2.jpg?dl=0

[@ArtHeld]

@@stevenjmagner - whoa! That is amazing! It is almost other-worldly. The added detail and contrast in both the trees and the mountains is great! Did you leave the camera unmoved between shots? Or just position it close to the same location?

[@stevenjmagner]

​@@ArtHeld the foreground was shot at the same time of this video. Once I was done taking images for this video, I put another lens on and did a quick pano stitch for the milky way that appears in this image. This was at prime time milky way season this year and I had a lot of time to play with settings and techniques!

[@Nico-rt2rm]

Did you use a star tracker for the multiple milky way photos?

[@WildEdgar]

is it just me or final version looks a bit blurry? just a bit. Anyway, great tutorial

[@janhradil]

command on windows? ok :D

[@stevenjmagner]

Did you try it? It's actually the aurora sky replacement hotkey!

[@dronenewengland3462]

8:22

[@michaelmirecki3114]

Why not just apply the mask to the group?

[@Deathbynature89]

The masks are there so the foreground doesn't confuse the auto-align tool. Remember the stars are moving, the ground is not.

[@teganmann2148]

You did well until you got to "eyeso". Hello, this is photography 101: ISO is an acronym, not a word!!! It stands for International Standards Organization. And it's pronounced I S O, NOT "eyeso". It's like saying yousa instead of USA. If you're going to do 'how to' videos, please use the correct terminology.

[@stevenjmagner]

Tegan Mann hello

[@HELIOSSTUDIO]

FUCK OFF

[@mattcrossley6944]

ISO is not an acronym but rather a word to describe the international organization of standards, so it is actually "eyeso".