Photographing and Processing the Constellation Orion: Image Stacking and LRGB Processing

[@conradedgewood]

I am pretty good at Photoshop, and I'll be honest with you.............you just blew my mind with this tutorial! KUDOS! Great job.

[@hubbabubbababys8125]

Eric Zep j

[@alanalain4884]

This is when you understand He's very good at Photoshop...

[@kaylaburnett8030]

Yes! Same! He is amazing!

[@aaronsippy2171]

Holy crap man I’ve watched a dozen tutorials already and not one even comes close to your ability to really simplify it in a VERY clear way for the people looking for help and still come out with an extremely impressive image. Thank you for this tutorial!

[@TedByrne68]

What I really appreciate here is that there is literally not one second of wasted time. Fantastic job - thank you.

[@stacybamon6073]

In my opinion the best Astro photography video tutorial on KZbin.

[@dennisqualls9235]

Ian - THANK YOU!!!!! I've been striving to learn astrophotography for over a year now. Frequent posts on DP Review astro forum and I've never received advice as good as your video. I'm confident with my photography of the skies I've just not received proper instruction on how to process the images in Photoshop/Lightroom. There are videos on KZbin for it but none as clearly done as yours. It's almost like an industry secret. Thank You for doing this video!!!!!!!!!

[@dennisqualls9235]

***** that's excellent. I just noticed SLR Lounge shared this video tutorial so hopefully you'll continue to get more "exposure" :)

[@jnanof]

Best tutorial ever on astrophotography processing! Learned more in the past 5 minutes than I have in the past year!

[@ajayanpoyyara]

Cannot believe how this has been processed to a beautiful Nebula with out any manipulation. Great tutorial

[@Hirusan]

This is perhaps the best tutorial I've ever seen on processing wide angle astrophotography. You can bet I'll be trying it out. Thank you.

[@Tosuzawa]

Your tutorials are the best on KZbin!

[@pixelpodium]

I am using photoshop since 7 years now. And yet I felt like a total amateur while watching this tutorial. This is one of the best photoshop tutorial and I am amazed to see the contents available in my picture after following this method. Thank you so much for sharing this.

[@streetsolidier69]

I'm watching every video you made right now, I'm learning so much! Thank you!

[@geraberl]

I have recently started getting into astrophotography and your videos are proving to be an enormous help. Many thanks.

[@LonelySpeck]

geraberl thanks!

[@geraberl]

One quick question. When you were shooting were you shooting RAW or JPEG?

[@LonelySpeck]

geraberl always shoot in raw

[@viperup]

Superb tutorial ! Isn't it incredible how much information is stored in those photos.

[@norbertalexy8803]

Thank you Norman!!! It's amazing what and how much you achieve with just decent camera kit and normal Photoshop functionality. And how clearly you manage to explain a lot of complexity. You definitely made me curious, and I will be back to follow more of your tutorials.

[@iancontreras7688]

This is one of the most helpful tutorials out there. From a fellow Ian, thank you!

[@theviewfromthepanopticon1852]

WOW....that process is something else. I too applaud you sir!

[@ThinkCriticallyNow]

Best tutorials on KZbin, thanks so much.

[@ThinkCriticallyNow]

***** Just waiting for a clear night to try it :P

[@jennifer7685]

this was so easy to follow! i mean, i'm not familiar with the process at all, but you were very clear with each step, what you were clicking and why. much appreciated

[@victorialazareva]

I don't know what I would do without you! Thank you very much for all of your work :)

[@Z3Rv]

You make the best tutorials! very easy to follow and understand :)

[@alanalain4884]

Yeah... That would be on 0.10 Play Speed though.

[@wNNdSharK]

I'm blown away! You sure know what you are doing...

[@cherylwilcox9648]

Thank you for sharing this! I used 47 one minute tracked exposures I took over the weekend with my Nikon Z6ii (astro-modded) and followed your tutorial. Reasonably happy with the result but I may go back and try it again on another day to see how it comes out.

[@as10046]

This was more a demonstration video than a tutorial. Good skills.

[@omeralmali6201]

This is one of the best astrophotography tutorial I've seen yet!

[@Loganberriez79]

wow, this is the most technical tutorial I've ever seen. It's going to take me some time to follow your methodology

[@alanalain4884]

Yeah... May be going back to “Etch A Sketch”...

[@jamieturner4248]

This was mostly voodoo but its favourited and when im a little more familiar with photoshop im coming back here to absorb your wisdom... great job man

[@kd5oldman]

I got my Sharp Star in the mail the other day. Now we're looking forward to getting out west in a month or so to work on some astrophotography. You are very thorough in you videos. I might have to re watch them a few dozen times to understand what you have done. The results are fantastic!

[@jenesuispasbavard]

The 55/1.8 is my favorite lens of all time!

[@cosmicbrewery]

Thanks Ian! I know I saw that but didn't catch the alignment part. Your videos are so helpful I can't wait to shoot some of my own!

[@FelixTran]

WOW. I was having trouble designing a workflow to process my Cocoon nebula and Elephant's Trunk images. I'm excited to try out your tutorial. Amazing work again, Ian!

[@JulienGarros]

Amazing Ian! Thank you so much for showing your workflow.

[@spencanelli]

Excellent tutorial, I feel like I can easily follow along. The reasoning for each step is explained and there's no handwaving or magic. I can't wait to try this process!

[@Pontiacforme]

Fantastic Ian, for someone just starting astro photography, this was great!

[@PatrickPoendl]

Outstanding, brilliant tutorial. Thanks a lot, Ian!

[@PeterZelinka]

Fantastic tutorial!! This really helped me take a Milky Way closeup and make it look surreal!!

[@jonaspetersen4719]

Thank you, Ian. I am looking now forward to the beginning of astrophotography season.

[@mattys3248]

CHAMPION!! This is amazing 🙌 Need more of these kinds of tutorials that are basic enough just to stick to PS and not need 3rd party programs that cost 100's Thanks you

[@NikhilShahi]

Wow - what a tutorial. I learnt so much from this one. Thanks much!

[@GabrielSantos-gp3kz]

Amazing Tutorial, and awe-inspiring images, or an untracked-fixed camera! Keep up with such good work! Best regards from Brazil

[@XxChillikingxX]

Absolutely stunning. Thank you! Have a great new year.

[@petegeanacopulos9730]

Ok that was a lot to digest in 15min, but omg dude thats amazing. I just got into AP with CMOS cameras and i wish i had half as much knowledge in Photoshop/LightRoom as you do. BADASS!!! Teach me your ways lol.

[@slmdaddy1]

Ian this is really good - great job in explaining well done! thanks for posting

[@AlphaSphere]

Awesome tutorial! Going to test this out in southern france in a couple of weeks.

[@armandomorales5857]

Excellent!! Thanks for sharing this tutorial, I reprocessed and image of Andromeda and now it certainly looks better

[@robcarew5925]

Excellent tutorial. Great work and effort.

[@Rezaroth]

time to tear my pocket and spend money on a telescope. Thank you so much for the efforts in sharing this amazing tutorial. Ya know in my country you would pay a lot of money to give courses about these effects. Thank you again. I really appreciate it... Faisal Saudi Arabia

[@Mrmark154]

Thanks so much mate!!! I'm just getting into astrophotography, and your site plus these videos are REALLY helping me bring the WOW factor out in my images! THANKS!!!

[@RGallucciPhotography]

This was one of my favorites! I'll be out shooting Orion as soon as we get a break in the clouds. I just used these techniques on a Milky Way Photo and love the results. Thanks Ian.

[@KonstantinosThemelis]

Amazing tutorial! very useful to all astrophotographers! Good work :)

[@jacquelynnpride3966]

Loved this tutorial! Can't wait to try out some photo stacking

[@alanalain4884]

the stacking is the easy part... What an awesome tutorial.

[@alanruizphotography]

That's amazing honestly can't thank you enough. I've got so many photos of orion with my star tracker so hours of exposure but zero post processing skills. Will give this a go

[@KaushikChakrabortyikc]

Extremely details and fine tuned tutorial.... Thanks for it.

[@pault5947]

Superb tutorial, Very easy to follow and understand. Thank you!

[@MatthewHinmanTexas]

Would love to see this updated for Adobe CC suite.

[@huexley]

finally a well detailled tutorial ! Best of all

[@bingtalksofficial]

can't help commenting here. such a good tutorial. thank you Ian!

[@More-Space-In-Ear]

It's amazing how photoshop has changed our view of the skies. I learnt photoshop late in life during an adult college course and the first thing our tutor said was photoshop was used for the Star Wars films...I was hooked!… these days the software has changed so much I doubt I would recognise it... what is it now CS8?? Anyway, you've shown great skill in showing us the beauty of space just using a camera....and a bit of software.. thank you for sharing your skills. 👍🏼😊

[@saif.aldhaheri]

Ian you have been a great inspiration to me!

[@RadixSortable]

Awesome video. I never knew I could stack directly in photoshop. I always stack in Deep Sky Stacker and then process in photoshop. Liked and subscribed. Cheers and clear skies!

[@alexanderquentingoldovsky2353]

This video is gold to me, thanks for sharing your work!

[@geoffgc]

Fantastic tutorial, thanks! And Red Rock, brilliant. I'm in LA too so that's an easy drive to make it worthwhile.

[@LionelJunior]

Very nice video dude! Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

[@suffysdave]

Wow! the best tutorial ever on using photoshop for astro photography, two of my hobbies combined :-)

[@lorddarphyve]

You're my hero. I'm doing this on the next clear night!

[@a1exsand]

Awesome video, I'm going to be in the mountains next week and death valley next month. Definitely will be giving this a try.

[@chriswilson2917]

Your tutorial videos are outstanding. Exceptional work.

[@Pickendi]

Thank you very much! Without seeing this I had just taken a similar shot and struggled with getting colour from it. Do not have much knowledge in that part of the process. So again . .Thank you!

[@shmuelgoldstein9020]

Wonderful, detailed tutorial, can't wait to try it on my own

[@Anand1089]

Wow This just blew my mind away :D really good stuff, keep up the good work. I cant wait to get a chance at a night sky again !!!

[@AvijitNag]

Ian, this is good. By following your tutorial I have achieved a fantastic result from some forgotten and almost discarded shots of Orion. Only that PS denied to align them together and during applying median filter the "Orion" disappeared. So I had to watch another of your Episode of Straightening horizon and individually aligned 40 frames - I just had to align the 3 stars in the belt. I also saw another channel where the photographer advises for Dithering - moving camera by couple of star Dia so that the noise reduction can be better. I will have to practice that but then if I am taking a frame every 25-30 sec, the stars will move so Dithering happens automatically. Idk - let me try and see what reduces the noise most. But as of now your tutorial is just fantastic. THANK YOU.

[@RaysAstrophotography]

This is very well done Ian. Thanks

[@BullettoothRodney]

Love your videos Ian, keep them coming!

[@azcharlie2009]

How in the world do you kids learn all this stuff!? I've watched this several times and I think I would need to view it about 25 more to absorb all the information! Amazing work..... Rick Tucson

[@ClausTuxen]

Now thats truly amazing....Love your videos Ian, have used your tut's so much...Thanks again

[@RickshawMunky]

Fantastic video. Many thanks and have a great New Year.

[@propboss]

This is inspirational and I'm having a go! Is there a way to complete the process with Elements or is this a case of "must have" the full Photoshop?

[@MrKenishiwah]

Can you follow this with exposures with a tracker? And btw this was amazing without using calibration frames unless I missed that part somehow.

[@michaelsedlacek]

Very nice tutorial! THANK YOU SOOO MUCH Ian!

[@theagg]

This technique proved very useful, convertng my first attempt at stacking and procesing using other methods which resulted in an awful orange cast mediocre image suffused with amp glow, into a very passable much more detailed, fairly colour neutral image with which I was quite surprised. Especially considering the images were all taken using a less than perfect set up (24mm at F4 on the Sony kit zoom for my A6300) and the result for the section of Milky Way I had framed was good for that,, it made me extra keen to try out the manual F1.8 lens I haved just purchased. Thanks!

[@simon6478]

This video made me subscribe. Love how you explain everything. Keep doing that!!

[@tempesfugit2147]

Is the sensor in the Sony camera modified in any way to record all those red nebula? Wonderful video!! thank you for the time you put in those tutorials.

[@anthonyrenaud5783]

Wow...thank you for the tutorial. I only have a 50mm f/1.8 for my Canon 7D Mark II. It’s a crop sensor camera. Will your settings work as well?

[@Th3G3m1n1m4n]

Excellent tutorial Ian, as with all of your videos ... nice presentation ... top stuff mate ... Question: I noticed you didn't create a 'clipping mask' for the Nebulosity and Detail layers when you added effects to them ... therefore the Colour layer gets all of those effects added also? ... or does it only apply to the combined layers once you combine them together? ... therefore leaving the Colour layer alone? ...

[@2010pinmaster]

is there a reason why "stack mode" would be greyed out? I am trying to famaliarize myself with this process using just 2 images could that have something to do with it?

[@Sharpless2]

did you convert them to a smart object? I remember reading that "stack mode" is greyed out in a specific version of photoshop.

[@TealeBritstra]

Handy. Over the most recent new Moon period, I took a series of about 26 images of Orion (and about half a dozen dark frames) while staying at a dark sky location. My processing of such images has never been very good, so now I can run through the tutorial and see how my results turn out.

[@TealeBritstra]

***** Will do. Since I have dark frames, I might try some combinations using deep sky stacker (or other software) to align and stack lights and darks, then PS to do LRGB processing etc, and see how that goes too.

[@DylanODonnell]

Looks like a good tutorial, thanks! I wouldn't mind doing some orion wide field stuff soon too.

[@DylanODonnell]

Hey that's a great tutorial. I already do the median inverted layer mask stuff in my workflow but the luminance / colour layers are things I need to add as is the photoshop based stacking which removes the need for any astro stacking software. (Good for Mac users like me) Making notes on this one!

[@TealeBritstra]

So far my output is still pretty average. I suspect there are a few reasons. 1) It's summer, so there's quite a bit of heat noise, and I didn't use the in-camera noise reduction 2) Canon 50mm f1.8 (at low f ratios) means there's a fair bit of coma, which stacking seems to make worse. 3) I should have used a higher ISO, but that makes noise more obvious. 4) I should have shot more than the dozen or so light frames. My testing continues though.

[@TealeBritstra]

My conclusion: I need way more practise. Plus, I need to shoot with the histogram to the right more, which always seems like a bad idea when I do it because the noise looks horrendous. Until then, I have some planetary imaging data to collect and work on :-)

[@EdMacKerrow]

Nice tutorial. I tried to repeat this using a 5D3 in two very dark locations with a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II. I never was able to see Barnard's Loop? I tried different exposures and at both ISO 1600 and ISO 3200, 32 images each. How much did you crop your image to get the relative sizes of these Orion features? Overall a great tutorial. I will compare this using Nebulosity on a Mac. I shoot in RAW and one tip is to convert to something smaller than CR2 before doing the pano merge and the smart object steps (it basically slowed my MB Pro 16 GB of RAM way down). To remedy this I did some edits in LR, then exported as compressed TIFFs before doing the merge and smart object median filter stack.

[@rajatsrivastav7580]

This is one of the best tutorials I have come across. Thank you very much, Ian. :) I have a Nikon D7000 (crop-sensor) and a 35mm prime lense (behaves like a 52mm lens on a full-frame). I think that if I set my camera to ISO 3200, I will have a LOT more noise than what you had in your images. How do I know what is a high enough ISO value to set to?

[@rajatsrivastav7580]

I think Calyp Sob answers this question by saying that the camera should be set at unity gain. Today is the first time I have heard this term. Now I am just trying to find the unity gain value for D7000. Since the camera was released in 2011, I am guessing the unity gain is between ISO 800 and ISO 1600.

[@rajatsrivastav7580]

***** Thank you very much for your answer, Ian, and for promptly replying. I think I understand it better now. :) I will follow your workflow with ISO 1600 and with ISO 3200 see how it results may vary (most likely, they will be very similar). For other situations where I want to keep the noise to a lower value, I will use a faster lens and/or a faster shutter speed with a tripod. Thanks for the great video again. :)

[@csviraj]

Nice Tutorial ! Question: While taking 32 images, will the nebulae not be in different position in ur image from first to the last one ? Will the photomerge be able to take care of such adjustments. I have similar question regarding milky way panoramas. Wish/Request you would do a tutorial on that and explain in that to merge the photos especially considering the fact that relative position of the milky way with respoect to the foreground would have moved/changed. Thank a ton !!!

[@BoNERul]

Tons of useful information. How would you recommend a 50mm f1.8 prime lens on a APS-C body (75mm) for such a task? Thank you.

[@leonbeattie]

awesome tutorial i cant wait to get started on my processing!

[@dennisrkb]

thx for the awesome tutorial! what about lens distortion?, or would that cause problems during alignment later?

[@samsularifin4894]

The best tutorial ever, thank you...

[@akkarparkiamopas3401]

I will try this Summer in NZ with my stock camera and 50 1.2 need to find a really dark location though. Thanks for your valuable tutorial

[@cmr771]

Fantastic tutorial Ian, I really enjoy your teaching techniques! Question for you if you dont mind? I'm newer to this process and in PS when I do my photo-merge and its done aligning, it shows as one long panorama photo as opposed to a stack of one on top of another like yours in the video. It appears that all my setting mirror yours, but I cant figure out why mine don't stack. Thoughts?

[@djayfriMusic]

Really awesome! Nice job. Ill be trying this first clear night.

[@ManFree1021]

Hi Ian. I love this video, and the result i got from following your advice is amazing. I just have one question though. I don't have the stacking function because I don't have photoshop CS6 extended or CC, is there any other way I can work around it so I can still get a cleaner image? Thank you so much :-)

[@stevenchristenson2565]

+Samuel Hung You can load all the layers then select them all and do "Align Layers". You won't have "median" or "average" which are part of extended, but you can accomplish an "average" function by setting the bottom layer to 100%, the next layer up to 50%, the next to 33%... and so on where the percentage is equal to 1/n where n is the number of layers up starting with 1 at the bottom. The blend mode for all should be "Normal"

[@ManFree1021]

Steven Christenson oh awesome!! thank you so much!! :-D

[@diegoperezvaldes3207]

All the images are made with the same configurations when they are joined ??? and is this processing formula recommended for the dairy route? Greetings from Chile, what a great tutorial for Orion.

[@nico-3188]

Very useful tutorial! Thanks. Do you think this technique can be applied to other photos, Showing different parts of the night sky, too? Or is it valid only for Orion? Thanks!!

[@pzampella]

Hi Ian. Thank you for all your tutorials, they are really helpful! I've been having a problem when stacking the images on PS, it saids that "Some of the images can't be stacked". Did you used a tracker when you took the pictures? Or how can I fix that issue?

[@KG2012able]

Wow！Magnificent tut that i have never seen before,thanks 4 sharing lan!I wonder that did u use the Equatorial or taking these pics just manually changing the angle of the lens to make sure it shoots almost the same pic everytime and BTW colud u share some of these raw flies so that i can practise at home，at last really enjoy every tut that u posted ！！