Stacking long exposures

[superdiver]

I wold like to stack some pictures of star trails. How do I do this with elements 6?

[fogdrip]

Hi superdiver -

Welcome to the Village! :D

So, stacking is a somewhat loaded term, Do you mean creating a "Stack" in the Organizer?

Or are you looking to layer your photos one on top of the other in the Editor?

If you create a "Stack" in the Organizer, you simply highlight the photos to be "Stacked" and right click and choose Stack. This creates a stack that disappears from view except for the top photo - a method to save screen real estate within the Organizer.

If you are looking to layer two or more photos in the Editor to make a composite view of these pictures - Try highlighting these pictures in Organizer - Hit CTRL-I. This opens them in the Editor. They are all available in the photo bin at the bottom of the page. Just drag and drop. Use the handles on the bounding box to size and move the image.

Of course I'm assuming you have the Windows version of PSE 6 - since the Mac version has no Organizer :o

Good luck,

Steve

[superdiver]

Thanks, I mean stack to help minimize the noise due to long exposures. And as luck would have it I love and use Macs.....

[fogdrip]

superdiver -

Thanks, I mean stack to help minimize the noise due to long exposures. And as luck would have it I love and use Macs.....

Fortunately, there are people from both camps here, coexisting peacefully ;). I'm sure a Mac person will be along to give you a hand. Or better yet, a camera expert to give some tips on long exposure.

I have done some long astro exposures with film, but never had luck with digital, so I'm kind of interested in what you find out!

Good luck,

Steve

[superdiver]

well, I understand the camera part, (no expert, but am limping along), but I want to get the star trails longer without exposing longer. Once I find a time/exposure I like I would like to take multiple other pictures and then stack them to get much longer trails..if that makes sense... here is an example (if I can figure out how to post pictures on here). imagine the same exposure but with trails that go completely across the sky. problem is if I expose longer to get longer trails my picture gets much "brighter", more exposed and noisier and the sky get to look like daylight....


this is about the exposure I want...
http://superdiver.smugmug.com/photos/437640544_tsfnF-L.jpg


where as this one has the trails closer to what I want but was too ever exposed (and I dropped the exposure in post processing as far as I could but its still too over exposed)
http://superdiver.smugmug.com/photos/437640886_jA8jF-L.jpg



does that all make sense?

[Derry]

Superdiver, besides your elements ya may want to look at
DeepSkyStacker, free astro software for what you are wanting to do,,

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

Derry

[Danudin]

Not an expert by any means they will come later, but you should be able to do what you want with layers. This would mean using masking so that the correct exposure for the foreground may be found in one exposure only so you just layer the subsequent photos with the lines extended and the foreground masked out until you get the photo that you want. Not well explained but I think you want layers and masks, not stacking.

Ron

[RonH]

DeepSkyStacker is windows only and he is running MAC.
Ron

[Danudin]

SuperDiver is windows only and he is running MAC.
Ron

Sorry RonH I thought layers was universal in PSE

[fogdrip]

superdiver -

Good responses so far! I like that software suggestion from Derry.

One thing that comes to mind is to separate your picture of the lighted house and the dark sky. Take you long sky photo at the darkest place you can find - then add the two separate photos together, using layers in PSE6.

That way the astro-exposure isn't fighting the light from the building.


Good luck,

Steve

[RonH]

Danudin,
You are right it is universal. I was responding to Derry's post about DeepSkyStacker and I miss typed. I edited my post. DeepSkyStacker is a windows only program.

Sorry for the confusion.
Ron

[superdiver]

I was thinking about using layers, but then i would need to figure out how to do layers...lol I understnad the concept, but havent figured out how to actually "do it"... LOL, I am an PSE idiott...

its not so much the exposure I want to control (thats a major part of it), but I want to control the noise and darkness of the sky and get extra long trails by adding a bunch of shots together. And as I understand it I would have to mask out around the stars to do it too, right, or am i confused still...lol

Deepstar tracker odes seem to be popular, but I dont want to put windows on my Mac, that would defeat the whole purpose of using a Mac ( I hate windows now),

plus then my Mac would be defiled and I would feel dirty when I used it...lol

[superdiver]

Also, I was thinking, would "bracketing" do the same thing?

[Danudin]

Bracketing is great for HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photos I also am looking at the possibilities of that, the end product looks stupendos. But it sounds more like you want to read up on Timelapse photography to get the effect of the starlight tracking from horizon to horizon.

Look at the tutorials available through the Adobe website as well as here in the village,
http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32057
or you may pick up some ideas in this thread.
http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30767

I think that I am currently aware of about 5% of what layers are capable of, and I use them every day. Get with the program, Layers will save you.

In My Humble (Who'd believe that) Opinion.

Ron D

[ljameso1]

David, This method is tedious but may be what you want. I used a very small selection brush to select 1 of the trails, then did command+C to copy and command+V to paste. This puts the selection onto it's own layer. I then used he move tool to line it up to lengthen the trail. When you get more confident doing one exposure for the trails and one for the foreground is really the easiest way to go. Avoid noisy sky by using a low iso and turning on the long exposure noise reduction.