Stacking for Noise Reduction in Starry Landscape Stacker (Better Than Sequator?)

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[@farglemeister]

With SLS you can create a sky/foreground mask (b & w image) in Photoshop and import it along with your images and it will do a perfect separation ignoring the painting option. Also, I’m curious why you convert to sRGB at that point instead of continuing to edit in AdobeRGB or ProPhoto. Thank you as always for sharing.

[@AlynWallace]

I was looking for a way to do that and couldn't see anything obvious. Didn't realise it would automatically detect that it's a mask on import. I'll give it a go and make an update video thanks for letting me know. As for sRGB. I just prefer the simplicity of keeping my entire workflow in sRGB. It makes monitor calibration and everything just so much more straightforward and 99% of people are going to view my images in sRGB anyway. A lot of people use AdobeRGB because they're big on printing but even then there's barely much of a difference when printing astro images. Would love to hear your thoughts

[@farglemeister]

@@AlynWallace If you go to the help menu and select documentation, it's under Special Topics: Externally Generated Masks. The info is very basic. As far as why I don't use sRBG until I export for sharing, I suppose it's just a way to future-proof my data. You never know what technology will be around in 10 years. Having more data seems better. That said, whenever I look back, most of my images make me cringe, and I want to reprocess them anyway. ;-)

[@AlynWallace]

@@farglemeister hahaha I'm in one of those phases right now

[@farglemeister]

@@AlynWallace btw, unrelated, here's a MSM tip I discovered accidentally: The first time I tried to use it, I had it flipped around, basically mounted backward. I ended up with a star trail image in 1/2 the time since it was going against the earth's rotation.

[@paulwood6729]

@@AlynWallace A lot of people that use AdobeRGB do so because they think the wider colour space = better. Some also think it means more points of colours but that's not the case. As you say few monitors can reproduce AdobeRGB and printing used CMYK, so in either on-screen viewing or printing that extra colour space is either never used or clipped when viewed on other devices.

[@FelixEarth]

Rest in peace Alyn, you now belong to the stars you always loved man

[@SAMIAMFNX]

whatt happed

[@FrancescoAttardo]

...????

[@LavieduMiel]

@@FrancescoAttardo Alyn passed away two month ago... bad and quick infection.

[@carloscastrofotografo]

Amén

[@phila3884]

This was a great tutorial. I've been using SLS for a couple of years now, and the guides provided by the developers were very basic. A commenter earlier noted that the stars in complicated tree foregrounds might be recovered by zooming in and adding more red "sky" dots in between the leaves (needles). BTW, Joshua trees probably make the best night sky foregrounds. I'm going to try to catch the green comet (C/2023 E3 ZTF) using one as a foreground this weekend.

[@sirwholland7]

Thanks for the tips!

[@guillermolopez1356]

Great tutorial! thanks a lot!

[@josephhershey]

yeah. that intro to the astrovlogs where you sign your name in the sky is captivating. gives a good feel. like hearing the netflix "ba bong" at the start of a movie. right on.

[@-757-]

Thanks for another great video. Not a Mac user. but the program differences help to better understand how the editing processes are working

[@alandyer910]

Just a tip in processing the original raw files - to avoid sharpening the noise raise the Masking slider up to 70 - 80 %. Hit Option while moving the slider to see a B&W mask showing in white what will be sharpened and it’ll be just the stars and bright edges. Thanks for the tutorial!

[@AlynWallace]

Thanks Alan! I do exactly this after the stacking

[@cyankirkpatrick5194]

Wishing you and your crew a Wonderful Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year🥳🎉🎊🤶☃️⛄🎄🎄🎅🎅🎅🎅🎅

[@Robert-R]

Great video. Very helpful. It's interesting that you find Sequator to be better than Starry Landscape Stacker. I've found the opposite. My main issue with Sequator is that it really tends to accentuate the light pollution in the horizon. I stacked the identical set of images in both and Sequator gave me very noticeable orange glow, and Starry Landscape Stacker did not. Had that happen a couple of times. With regard to the masking, it depends on how meticulous you are with the application of the red dots. Along the horizon I zoom in and go into all the nooks and crannies and put in closely spaced dots. It's more time consuming, but much more accurate. The other option is like was mentioned by someone else, that you can import a mask from PS and use that. I'm actually wondering when both of these pieces of software will start to incorporate algorithms similar to what LR and PS have now to detect the sky. Not sure how difficult that will be to incorporate.

[@bradperry4902]

Just wanted to share that, in my experience with StarryLandscapeStacker, sometimes disabling lens distortion correction makes a big difference in terms of fixing a problem where the warping effects of the correction appear as a weird pattern in the noise that the stacking can't solve. It doesn't always happen, but I've just gotten into the habit of always turning it off (but leaving on the vignette and chromatic aberration corrections as needed).

[@AlynWallace]

Yes sometimes you can get weird patterns if you apply lens correction first. This is certainly an issue when you're stacking a large amount of photos such as for star trails.

[@paulflatt1518]

Great video. I use StarryLandscapeStacker and have observed the same result. Playing around with the method used when you save does have an effect. You showed Min, Max, and Mean. I do not recall at the moment but there is an option that seems to keep stars near complex object better. I think it has Dup in the name. But there might be other artifacts that occur using that method. Anyways. I am looking forward to your next video to see what you do. Thanks.

[@davidligon6088]

Extremely useful. Thank you! I’ve used StaryLandscapeStacker for a couple years. I did not know you could bring it up from Lightroom. I did notice the lack of stars between complex trees, though. Do you use two separate computers, or do you run a PC emulator to run Sequator? Too bad it’s not available for Macs. I look forward to getting my “fix” in your next video.

[@Seegurkenwombat]

Hey Alyn! Thank you so much for your comparison, just at the right time. (Had a conversation with Uros Fink who says SLS is superior and I doubted it, but had no personal experience with SLS); in my opinion Sequator is a gem as long as you're not into PixInSight. On a side note: I always see you lifting shadows in preprocessing; Sequator itself is best used with linear data and in my extensive use of Sequator I saw this ring true. I even deactive the camera curve and switch it to linear. Then I'm able to get h-Alpha data out of my unmodified camera alot (I also switch off denoise and sharpening except for color noise because Capture One does a better job beforehand than in post). I love how you stay simple with your pictures (esp. not moving the tripod); do you also do this when tracking? In front of a leafless tree I tend to move the tripod in that case because it's a pita to blend fore- and background together and I need to do a lot of content aware filling with the sky to get the blurred tree out of the picture. I'm not sure which one of the two techniques is more true to life, moving the tripod or fill afterwards when tracking. What is your take on this? Cheers from Germany Jan

[@TheCosmicGuy0111]

Nice!

[@johnb9836]

Hi Alyn, Very good video for those individuals not familiar with SLS. I do like creating a mask that is more accurate and exporting prior to SLS stacking… Especially when there are complex backgrounds. Just out of curiosity, I haven’t noticed the other software you said you were going to discuss in your next post processing video. Is it a stacking or masking software?

[@danieldance9870]

I purchashed this and its really not that good for astro stacking. The main problem is works with non-linear images or ones that have already been stretched. Problem with that is all the best faint details and data from an astro image basically gets wiped out when you convert right to a non-linear file. Sure, it can reduce noice especially with brighter background sky areas and stars, but if you're trying to stack for the benefit to pull out very faint data, this won't work for that.

[@michaelgordon6071]

Excellent and enjoyable tutorial as usual. The author of sequator endorses stacking the raw files though most seem to use work flow of stacking tiffs. What do you think of using the raw files?

[@4sapphireb]

Just did my first stack. I think I might sell my trackers for wide view.

[@grega9220]

I'm new to astrophtography but photograph wilife in bad light all too often. Have you tried the Topaz products for this workflow? I use it all the time for wildlife and tried it with my first handful of night-scapes as was so impressed for both noise and to reduce "oval" stars.

[@jorgediehl6845]

Hi Alyn, hope you are doing great. At the end of your video, you mention a new program for stacking and noise reduction. At the time, I believe I watched the video, but I can't find it on your channel anymore. Could you share the video again? Thank you and big hug from Brazil.

[@bjnslc]

Contradiction in settings. sRGB's narrow color gamut vs. 16 bit data. Use a wide gamut space with 16 bits.

[@boukydu28]

On my mac , i have vmware and a windows os just to use sequator. Great pieca of software

[@StampNScrap]

I'm a Windows gal so I use Sequator. Just wish you could zoom in when painting out the sky part of your base image. Otherwise, it has a lot of great options/features.

[@harshavardhananrajasimhan5026]

i cant download sequator in my pc... please help me

[@johncallery814]

Great video. I wonder how many one minute tracked photos I can stack in Starry Landscape Stacker for the best result. Or is it even worth it to stack tracked photos?

[@akkarparkiamopas3401]

I used to think Starry is better than Sequator until I found this video. Luckily I am windows user so I have to use Sequator anyway. Thanks for clarifying this. Cheers

[@radshoesbro]

I'm curious if you've used Lightroom's new AI denoise and your thoughts?

[@xyxean]

What the best situation to use stacking method in? To reduce noise, would you use a star tracker in most situations?

[@AlynWallace]

Best situation to use stacking is if you don't have a tracker (or your tracker runs out of battery) or if its windy and you don't want to risk a 4-minute exposure or there are moving objects like flora in the foreground

[@nergnera5205]

Müthiş

[@ahmedwaddah9391]

Do you activate lens distortion control in camera when shooting astro panoramas?

[@AlynWallace]

I use Lightroom for lens correction

[@waynechase6950]

You mentioned in your video, about a video you did for Sequator. But, I did not see a link for it. Do you have a link or a date for it that I can search for. Thanks

[@AlynWallace]

Added it to the video description

[@raphaelcoelho1557]

Very interesting. How did you created the masks for the tree example on both software? I guess on sequator you did the mask manually, right? Could that be difference on the masks?

[@AlynWallace]

You draw with a brush, like I did in the example at the start. Funny thing is you are able to use smaller brushes and be more accurate with SLS but Sequator still does a better job.

[@jiggyb21]

@@AlynWallace I believe you’ll get a much better result by not painting on the sky with a brush but rather adding more dots before creating the sky in the first place. In your example I would zoom in and add a few blue dots in between the leaves of the tree and let SLS use that information to create the sky mask in the first place. If you take a little time to do that the mask will include those light values between the leaves. I’d be very curious for you to try it.

[@danielnorman8595]

It would be interesting if you took these results and then compare them to what you get out of Topaz AI noise reduction. That program is amazing. They use a totally different method with some advanced algorithm. If you've never tried it it's well worth the money.

[@AlynWallace]

I've tried it, many times over many years. Always looks too fake and leaves artefacts in places. Some areas get heavy noise reduction and others not so much. I've never found consistency with it.

[@johncooper9746]

@@AlynWallace same

[@tonymarsh3541]

So now you're adding a cliffhanger to your videos, leaving us waiting for the next episode to find out what's better than Sequator or SLS! Can't you still run Sequator on your Mac anyway?

[@AlynWallace]

Yeah guess I would need something like Parallels to run Windows and give it a go

[@dw.in.michigan]

I have a couple of questions that pertain to making edits prior to stacking, at least in Sequator. 1. I noticed you made some edits prior to stacking. Can you get the same results by stacking the RAW images first, then making the edits after stacking, since Sequator accepts RAW images? 2. Nico Carver cautioned against editing prior to stacking because altering the original data can create noise that you have to deal with in post. He says that even converting an image to TIFF, with no edits, can create noise in the data. I realize that his advice was specific to DSOs, but I was wondering if you've encountered that with landscape astrophotography, or if it isn't noticeable since it's wideangle and not zoomed in on a particular area of the sky.

[@AlynWallace]

If you're stacking for DSOs then things are far more critical yes. I prefer to see what I'm doing in the stacking software and it's much easier to apply the lens correction to the RAWs than the faff of applying it to the stacked TIFF

[@henrywede6442]

As far as I know, the developer of Sequator specifically recommends using raw files without any editing. However, almost nobody on KZbin can resist fiddling with the images ahead of time. We are creatures of habit I guess.

[@AlynWallace]

@@henrywede6442 I've tried both and can't notice any significant difference. RAW will always be better for sure, especially for deep sky stuff, but I like to see what I'm doing. One issue is I often use ISO invariance and shoot at ISO640 and Sequator is unable to create good foreground masks in that case as the image is almost black.

[@davelindey8023]

Why sRGB as your colour space when you export as tiff using your Stack preset? Wouldn't you want the deepest colour space?

[@AlynWallace]

99% of the people viewing my images will view them as sRGB jpegs on the web. İn the past I've found it frustrating editing in adobeRGB only for my images to look different in sRGB so I like to keep my entire workflow in sRGB for simplicity.

[@princcipe]

RIP

[@Sk3rRR]

Do you ever get moire patterns from stacking TIFFs?

[@AlynWallace]

Nope, that usually comes from applying lens correction before stacking.

[@Sk3rRR]

@@AlynWallace ahhh!

[@danmckee4988]

How are other noise reduction software such as DXO Pure Raw 2 and Topaz compare to Starry Landscape Stacker and Sequator?

[@AlynWallace]

Stacking is non-destructive (it is unveiling actual details that exist). Noise reduction software smooths out noise at the expense of details. Lately they use AI to try to recover detail but it can quite often look fake and painterly Stacking will always be king as itsa true representation.

[@danmckee4988]

@@AlynWallace Thank you for the quick reply! The reason I asked is that I have DXO and have used it for a couple of Milky Way photos with good results, but I don't have a copy of SLS or Sequator, I'm a Mac user. I primarily a landscape photographer, do you think SLS be a beneficial for landscape? I shoot at ISO 64 most of time. Thanks again.

[@AlynWallace]

@@danmckee4988 SLS is of zero use for daytime landscape pghotography to be honest

[@michaelsaltsman7550]

still can't believe ur no longer with us shine bright mate 😥

[@kowalskik.1333]

Why your stars are elongated (not round). Didnt you use a tracker? Thank you

[@AlynWallace]

No I didn't use a tracker

[@Warrior_Resisting_Colonialism]

@@AlynWallace What 35mm lens was this shot with?

[@AlynWallace]

@@Warrior_Resisting_Colonialism Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM

[@Hsukhaybir]

Where’s this at 17:10 ?

[@peteroberransmayr]

Wondering that too, did you ever find it?

[@Hsukhaybir]

@@peteroberransmayr no, couldn’t find it in next videos .. and he didn’t respond

[@PaulTreefella]

What if you're a Linux user ?

[@focusphotonsfrugally6644]

Affinity photo2 stacks and aligns in one go much easier than this workflow. And you can do it on an iPad no need for expensive computers. Just another option. Great video as always.

[@aerosoulzx]

I'm not sure I'd consider an iPad to be a 'cheap' option compared to a PC... 😳

[@focusphotonsfrugally6644]

@@aerosoulzx the majority of the best most creative applications and programs are created for apple, so in that respect an iPad is way cheaper. As for windows laptops the cheaper ones are all 32bit and a lot of these programs only run on 64bit. So again a laptop or desk top especially one that can edit Astro photography as well as 4K or 8k video is going to be considerably more expensive. In my experience.

[@aerosoulzx]

@@focusphotonsfrugally6644 are 32bit laptops still made? I'm genuinely shocked! A base level iPad isn't actually bad at 500 notes, but I still don't think it'll ever replace my desktop personally - but I'm impressed that you don't need an iPad Pro to run Affinity Photo 2, at least. There's nothing frugal about the Pro, as lovely as they are. 😂

[@focusphotonsfrugally6644]

@@aerosoulzx yep unfortunately I purchased a 32bit laptop completely unaware that there was a difference and then discovered that I couldn’t run the programs I wanted sadly it wasn’t even mentioned in the specs. That laptop is now an expensive coffee mug coaster. Agreed an iPad is not particularly cheap especially the pro, but it was cost effective compared to what I would need to spend on a laptop or pc. Especially when you get trapped in the loop of for another £100 that one is so much better and so on until you realise your looking at an Apple Mac that costs 6k.

[@AlynWallace]

I was under the impression that Affinity Photo 2 only stacks star images and is not able to stack landscape astro images with a foreground and starry sky or has somrthing changed?

[@osoriony]

Great video. I wanted to share something that will probably affect your channel. I just realized I am not getting all the notifications of your videos uploaded. I know I did select that option when I subscribed a while ago. If I try to correct it, I can't. I see a message that shows the request is invalid or that I can't do it because is content made for kids. I imagine you don't upload videos as "made for kids" because that limits that function. Apparently there is a bug in KZbin. I saw a video saying that if I go to my settings and confirm my account I will not have that problem anymore. I tools screenshots of the issue but I know perhaps there's no way to share with you. I would suggest you ask publicly to your viewers if they have the same issue and they cannot change the notification bell to all videos.

[@AlynWallace]

It's widely known that hitting the bell doesn't guarantee you get the notification. KZbin is a bit weird with that.

[@tdawg719]

1st

[@jamespirie2078]

Yer just a fraud lol composites are not real photos lol 😂 only kidding like yer work ps I’m a kristine rosé student