Reduce Noise with Photo Stacking - Photoshop Tutorial

[@ingemargunnarsson9146]

Really good video, easy to understand for all of us who need to learn more 🙂

[@BrianPex]

5:15 if you came for the info that pertains to the title

[@shredit123]

Great tutorial. I've watch a few different people show this technique but they way you broke it down so concisely was awesome! I look forward to more videos from you

[@Sparkaroo2u]

Hi Peter, loved this video and was so hopeful for finally getting to the 'stack mode' part with success. I followed everything up till 7:43 in your video. And then when I get ready to click stack mode, it's grayed out and not clickable. Do you (or anyone else reading this) know why or what I need to do in order to be able to select this and go on further? Thanks in advance for any input. :) Oh I'm using Photoshop CS5 (might be too old of a version? but why is it even there then) :)

[@SteveZodiac777]

Very useful - many thanks for sharing!

[@aperturl-rafif4930]

I have a question.. are you shooting those images with star tracker? If not what the setting in your camera until it not have any star trail? And how you put it the images together and almost got focused and not trailed.. I'm so happy if read this and answer it🙏

[@PeterZelinka]

I didn't use a tracker in this video. I use the 300 Rule for my shutter speed. In this case, about 6-8 seconds at 35mm. If you take a lot of photos immediately after one another, they won't move too far over the course of 20 exposures. (At least at a 35mm focal length)

[@aperturl-rafif4930]

@@PeterZelinka nice information. thank ya mate🙏

[@EDDIEGARAGE]

Fabulous, great tutorial thanks very much.

[@kurtdixon4700]

Thanks for that tutorial! The question i have is how you compensate for the earth's rotation or do you use a star tracker?

[@PeterZelinka]

For this example I just used a very short shutter speed. Now I use a star tracker and can shoot 4+ minutes with sharp stars!

[@astrodad-simonb277]

Thank you Peter! I have save this to my favourites !! :-)

[@ΣπύροςΧατζησταυράκης]

great work! thanks!

[@geo34south]

You seem to always prefer compositing using the median function. Why is this preferable over the mean. Does the latter not give improved bit depth?

[@timswaysland8382]

Thanks Peter, a really helpful tutorial and just what Its looking for.

[@jontas1371]

Hi. I have a question. Do I have to take a crop factor even if I use canon g7x mark ii? And is the 300 rule same as for DSLR's? Thanks.

[@travel9to5]

thanks for the tutorial, but what would have helped greatly is explaining what kind of input pictures you used for the stacking.. several exposures? the pics look pretty identical...

[@PeterZelinka]

travel9to5 Right, they should. Whenever photo stacking, you want to take as many images, one after another, without pause. This was a stack of about twenty, 8 second exposures. Each photo was taken with just a 1 second gap in between.

[@basilbcf]

If you're using a tracker do you still do stacking or just shoot with lower ISO and get longer exposure without stacking?

[@PeterZelinka]

I don't bother with stacking when I'm using a star tracker. I normally just take a single 4 minute exposure and that has minimal noise. However, if I'm doing deep space astrophotography, then I will do the photo stacking. I normally try to get an hours-worth of exposure time for any object

[@basilbcf]

@@PeterZelinka Thank you - that help a bunch!

[@smajor1279]

When I go to Layer then Smart Objects then Stack Mode is grayed out, like its unavailable...any suggestions?? I was doing so well too

[@AzfarRahman]

same is happening with me....in photoshop CC

[@TheTchamber]

@@AzfarRahman I was just starting this video in July 2020. At the beginning where he selects Photoshop, it's listed as Photoshop CS6, which must be different than Photoshop CC. I'm not wasting my time here. If you found a better video, post it here please!

[@JulledFTW]

Great video man! Keep it up, I'm going to try this technique later!

[@TheVeroneeLife]

Have you ever done a video on photo stacking moon photos to make a super sharp image? I have been trying to find out how to do it, getting frustrating

[@PeterZelinka]

Yeah for some reason the moon is always hard to stack, I've never really had much success either.

[@madmanmadani]

any idea why i would be getting a blurry photo after i apply the median stack? i aligned it before . Thanks!

[@PeterZelinka]

Usually the photo will be blurry wherever the alignment wasn't perfect. Try loading all the files again using the Load Files into Stack, with Auto Align. Before you create the Smart Object of all the layers, highlight all of the layers and change the blending mode to Lighten. Zoom in and make sure everything aligned properly. If the Lighten Blend mode doesn't show any alignment errors, I'm not sure why the photo would be blurry.

[@gregererickson937]

There seems to be some older versions of CS6 that do have stacking available for smart objects. I tried this method and stacking can't be pulled up in the dropdown.

[@the_film_foto]

I did what you explained in this tutorial. But my photoshop just thought that all stars are noise and removed them 😔 there was 100 photos in the stack...

[@Bukke100]

Hi - is there any limits of the amount of pictures for stacking? Have been using 5-7, which was ok, but thinking of 20-30 picture. Any experience?

[@PeterZelinka]

I used 20 in this video. The more photos you have, the cleaner the final image will be. However, if the stars drift too far between the first and last image, Photoshop will have trouble aligning everything.

[@RaysAstrophotography]

Thanks so much for this tutorial

[@curtismes]

GREAT video!!!!

[@RobertSmith-zu7rp]

Hey man, awesome vid and i like how it’s a pretty simple and very useful process. i do love the video, but i, unfortunately, have a 11-16 tokina on a crop body so i’m wondering: is there a way to shorten my shutter speed and still do this?

[@PeterZelinka]

Mr. Rob Yep! Check out my video on Sequator, it's a free photo stacking application for Windows. It can do wide angle images with ease!

[@Aeal0]

Hi, is there any way to use this on milky way with meteoroids? When I use median they will just disappear since they are only on one photo at the same location

[@PeterZelinka]

Yeah, that's the problem with Median Stack. Anything that isn't consistent from frame-to-frame is removed. One way you could fix that is by doing the Median Stack as normal. Then copy the meteor photo(s) over as separate layers on top. Change the blending mode to Lighten and create a layer mask for each. Then Invert the mask and paint in the meteor(s). It's possible that you will only need to change the blending mode to lighten. But I'm assuming it will add all the noise you just removed through the median stack.

[@Zhorellski]

Will different (iso,shutter & aperture) setting works?

[@PeterZelinka]

Technically, yes. The big thing is that the stars stay relatively in the same position, so Photoshop can properly align them. You may get odd results though, if each layer has different camera settings. However, if you equalize all of the exposures in Camera RAW or Lightroom first (so each image has the same brightness), it should work fine.

[@silverstone6644]

May I ask how long in length per exposure? You say 20 images in this vid but how long shutter speed per image please??

[@PeterZelinka]

Each photo was only 8 seconds long, since I was using a 35mm lens.

[@silverstone6644]

OK ty. I use a 12 mm Rokinon lens. A6000 Sony Camera. Perhaps around the same length then ok ty.

[@PeterZelinka]

12mm with a 1.5 Crop factor would be equivalent to 18mm. Using the 300 rule, 300 / 18 = 16 seconds Therefore, I'd recommend using a 15 second shutter speed in your case.

[@silverstone6644]

Thanks for your help 👌👍

[@phatboy312]

great tutorial!

[@nirajmunot6700]

Hey how did you get stack mode on CS6 extended version??

[@PeterZelinka]

It should be in there by default. Is it greyed out in the menus, or just not there?

[@nirajmunot6700]

Peter Zelinka It is just greyed out even if I convert images into smart object.

[@sanjayp2683]

Can you link the 100 photo stack?

[@zoeige]

Lighten mode made star trails ...i Did you a wide angle. What are the other techniques for wide angle stacking?

[@PeterZelinka]

Try Sequator, it's a free application that makes this entire process much easier! I've got a tutorial on Sequator too: kzbin.info/www/bejne/p52Xk3ikf8hnnqc

[@parthasarkar986]

what camera used here with 35 mm lens?

[@PeterZelinka]

Nikon D750 with Sigma 35mm Art lens

[@khactoan315]

very good video, you can specify actions implemented in time 6:24 How not, thank you very much

[@PeterZelinka]

At 6:24 Photoshop begins aligning all of the layers it just imported. It will do that automatically if you clicked the "Align Layers" checkbox when you imported your photos as layers. (5:49)

[@khactoan315]

hank you so much, I encountered the phenomenon of streaking in the right corner of the stack median treatment do?

[@PeterZelinka]

I'm assuming the streak is where the Auto-Alignment failed. Photoshop was able to align most of the stars, but not the ones in the corner. Likely due to a wide angle lens. You may have to crop out that portion. Alternatively, you can use a Layer Mask and paint out that section of the sky. It will be noisy again, but at least the stars won't be blurred.

[@zukilover2]

How did you get non-traily stars over the course of 20 photos?!

[@sahirsujahudeen5558]

The photos are aligned on top of each other. So the amount of trailing in the final would simply be that of one exposure

[@RobFall]

thank you that was really helpful

[@MoonArk]

Can i do this with 50mm 1.8?

[@PeterZelinka]

You should be able to! The only problem you'll have at 50mm is a max Shutter Speed of 6 seconds, before the stars blur. If you set your camera to a 7 second interval, you can capture the 20+ images necessary for this process. Alternatively, you can purchase a Star Tracker and capture much longer exposures without star trails. That is my preferred method at this point. You can watch some of my other tutorials for more information on that.

[@reganjia5605]

is this 20 photos of the same shot or different shots?

[@PeterZelinka]

I took 20 seperate photos, one after the other, using my camera's Interval Timer. Each photo was 6 seconds long. Using a 35mm f/1.4 lens allows this method to work well. In my experience, this method does not work well with wider angle lenses, due to distortion. You can still take the 20+ photos and use this technique to remove the noise in your foreground, but the stars will move too much.

[@martijnmulder2155]

Thanks So much, really useful!

[@wb5rue]

It's too bad that Photoshop doesn't have a dark frame subtract mode. You take an exposure with the lens cap on that is the same length as the images. This shows where there are hot pixels and would subtract them from the final image. Do you know of a way to do this in photoshop?

[@PeterZelinka]

I recently created a video on removing hot pixels in Photoshop. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bWrapKxjoL-Ld7s The best method for removing Hot Pixels is to simply turn on Long Exposure Noise Reduction. Alternatively, if you remember to take a Dark Frame (or multiple dark frames) immediately after capturing your Milky Way photos, you should be able to use that in Post Processing. I always seem to get weird artifacts using the Subtract blending mode in Photoshop though. I've heard PixlFixr can remove hot pixels, but I've never been able to get that program working. Might be worth looking into though! pixelfixer.org/

[@wb5rue]

Thanks, I just discovered it. Ideally you would take several dark frames and average them together as a master dark and, as you discovered, you should take your dark frames at the same time you take your long exposures. Great video.

[@tnreels9633]

i'll be looking forward to your content!

[@anikaitmakkar989]

What if I take the same photo and create multiple copies and name them different, will it still work. If not, why ?

[@PeterZelinka]

anikait makkar that won't do anything. The grain we are removing changes slightly in each photo. Median Stack works by removing things that aren't consistent between the layers. Think of it this way, there are static details in the photo - stars, Milky Way, foreground. Once they are aligned properly, the only difference between each photo is the random grain, caused by the lack of light. Photoshop sees that the stars are static and is able to remove all the random noise/grain around them. If you were to copy the same photo a bunch of times, the grain would be identical and Photoshop wouldn't know to remove it.

[@anikaitmakkar989]

Peter Zelinka Thanks for taking out time and replying to my question, I hope next time I go out to shoot milky way your tips will come in handy

[@inseries5494]

@@PeterZelinka Not exactly. Photoshop does not remove the noise by intelligently identifying static from non-static pixels, it is dumber than that. Photoshop only does the averaging, and by that fixed values stay the same and variable (that is noise) get little smaller since they go up and down between frames. tricky stuff called correlational reception

[@thinuramalkith]

Thanks Bro..

[@alphanimal]

The video starts at @5:20 😉

[@MattBlytheTheOne]

Ya but it removed a lot of the detail. Median cannot discern what is noise and what are background stars, so it flattens the image except for the brighter areas of contrast i.e. the prominent stars. You could have just used Surface Blur for the same affect. I preferred the first image. The Detail is Go(o)d. The Galaxy is full of Stars!

[@jtyler81]

Every program I tried to open looked totally different then what you opened.

[@Balanceiskey-nd6el]

Sounds like Jim from the office!

[@Zhorellski]

Tried (5 images) 28mm it didn't work, :(

[@Groesch7777]

You sound like Shane Caruth