Starry Landscape Stacker - Review

[@keninfarinato1177]

Thanks, that was very helpful seeing what to do and what not to do. Also your pacing was perfect!

[@jefferycampbell2243]

An alternative to the 500 / 300 rule that I like is to use an NPF rule calculator which takes aperture, pixel count, and focal length into account.

[@cwitt8280]

Very helpful Peter. Tx. It's hard to get all of shy painted between tree branches. Will try just painting where stars are with SLS then dealing with rest in PS to get rid of border problems. Had not thought of that.

[@ruckermb]

Excellent tutorial. Thank you. I hope to take some of your courses in the near future.

[@kurtoheim6183]

This is an extremely helpful video. Great and effective instruction on how to stack photos and use the software. THANK YOU!

[@wolfgangwiesinger9593]

Peter, what an inspiring video. But please anwer my question. Can you load RAW images int the programm or just TIFF?

[@ceedelosreyes6357]

Peter, you were saying that with a star tracker, you can take one 4m shot for the stars (for example) and then turn off, and take another 4m exposure for the foreground, but won't the star tracker have moved the position of the lens whilst tracking for the 1st shot, and now you are out of alignment for the second shot, for the foreground? Or does the movement of the tracker not matter/show up enough when it comes to blending the two images? Makes me also wonder if SLS can automatically blend two images/aline sky/ground? or would you recommend something else for that. Great video, so informative, thanks

[@dankahraman354]

Thanks Peter you are always on top of things.

[@koshka1967]

You recommend a star tracker, but it is nice to shoot single and stack to allow for time lapse video should you want to and of course, less equipment to carry in the field. Thanks for the video!

[@MarkMetternichPhotographyLLC]

Nice job on the video and thank you. BUT, some critical things you did NOT address was the sharpening and noise reduction settings in RAW. If it is going to remove luminance noise (and color noise) then it’s important to not use noise reduction in Lightroom or camera raw. If the software is going to eliminate noise then it might not be a good idea to blur the color noise either before this application. Also, you did not address sharpening. Capture sharpening in RAW on high noise images is always damaging. So, it is critical to turn OFF the default sharpening settings in Camera raw which are ideal for nothing! And especially images that have noise in them! Then after you finish and you have a very clean star image with very low noise a person can potentially capture sharpen the image. But they can certainly do output sharpening for the image a lot more for web or for print. Also, what is the ideal amount of exposures to get the highest quality stars? Eight, 16, 32, 64… If you’re going for maximizing Quality what is the best amount of exposures? Lastly, choosing 8 bit is not a good idea! All adjustments to 8 bit images are quite damaging! If someone wants to make an image and really make a top class fine art print then 16 bit is the only way to go. There are big differences in images that are adjusted in 16 bit and 8 bit. Eight bit images easily posterize and get blotchy and increase in artifacts by future adjustments. 16 bit is much more forgiving and translates into much higher quality enlargements without the damage. Thank you for answering my questions if you get the chance.

[@melgibbson8955]

thanx for sharing. I,m scratching my head, cuz I,m thinking if I want to do a stacked panoramic milky way that is like 5-8 frames and I have to shoot for each pano images 10 stack images doesnt the milky way move so much so I cant create a pano at the end or something?

[@video3ish]

Exceptional tutorial, thank you

[@doctoroslo]

Thanks for the easy to understand workflow tutorial! What ISO was used for the examples?

[@robertpendergast2620]

Very clear presentation.

[@于翔-t2e]

This video helps me a lot. Here is my question, is it necessary to use this APP when I shoot stars with a star tracker? Thanks.

[@PeterZelinka]

If you don't have a foreground in the photo, then you can use Starry Sky Stacker instead, which will stack your photos of the stars.

[@suresh1957]

Excellent, well explained !

[@scottprenzler4764]

Will this work for DSO?

[@IronMountainDefense]

Brand new newbie question. Did I understand ,you correctly that I could start my journey of Astro photography with just the DSLR and stacker software?

[@PeterZelinka]

Yep! Instead of taking a single exposure, try taking 10-20 in a row. Then you can stack them together to reduce the noise. Depending on your lens and shutter speed you'll have different results. For example, I can usually take at least 20 exposures, each 8 seconds, with a 35mm lens. However, I can only do about 6 exposures with a 14mm lens and 20 second exposures since the stars will move more. It takes some experimentation to figure out what will work best for your setup

[@gyanrosling2226]

I have a question. Does tracking add noise to the image because it's such a long exposure?

[@PeterZelinka]

Yes, it may add hot pixels to the image. That's one of the downsides of taking a single long exposure. However, you could always take multiple 60" photos and stack them together. That should provide better results in many cases

[@ronhudson8518]

Peter, with a tracker how easy is it to do a pano of the full arch ? Ron

[@PeterZelinka]

Panoramas can be tricky with a star tracker Personally, I would focus on the arch first. Once I have all the foreground images I need, then I would re-position and setup the star tracker. Ideally you would have a clear view, without obstructions (like an arch) and then take your photos for the sky. Once you have both foreground and sky images, you can blend them together in post-processing.

[@arielestulin9706]

500 rule is a starting point from which you adjust afterwards. In your image you're also shooting the milky way core, which means you're pointing the camera south. Stars in the southern sky move faster across the frame because they are moving mostly horizontally whereas in the northern hemisphere, they move around Polaris. Hence why your rule of 500 is breaking down. If you're going to say some blanket statement such as "I like to use the 300 rule" explain why you've made this decision. Also, at 20mm with the 500 rule, you should be shooting 25 seconds not 30 seconds.

[@soyeon5984]

Hello, I'm a student learning Photoshop. I'm not good at English, but it's too much to translate one by one, so I'd appreciate it if you could translate it in Korean.

[@MarkMetternichPhotographyLLC]

You say it does a "pretty good job" but you are NOT using it in a way where it is designed to work its best. A couple things missed here are that it is designed to detect and then remove color noise, but you had your color noise slider on in Lightroom. That has to be OFF! And the Sharpening has to be OFF (that creates more Luminance noise). This is CRITICAL in getting the best results. It also works on 8, 16, 32, 64, or 128 images best. A person can shoot much faster exposures and more of them, and stack like 32 or 64 and get WAY better cleaner and sharper results. As far as 8-bit. It is totally destructive to work in 8 bit. If someone is only going to make an adjustment or two, then, yeah not so bad, but 16-bit is WAY better, in fact Photoshop supports 32-bit which is incredible in combination with 16-bit. The tutorial is good, but has some major errors in it that really need to be addressed. If people follow the advice here they will be significantly hindering the ability of the program and the ultimate results possible!

[@leahcim967]

I’m super frustrated with this app. I’ve watched multiple demos (youtube) and am not getting past the first step in the starrylandscapetracker without it introducing anomalies that are unworkable.