There is already a stars above thread, but that one seems to be about wide field astrophotography. I've been taking a bunch of photos of the comets flying through the sky lately. Only ones I was able to get a decent shot of was Lovejoy R1 (see the Comets thread).
I discovered an intriguing new technique for stacking very short deep sky frames in photoshop, one which nearly eliminates noise without affecting detail. I've been trying to stack short (i.e. 1-2 second) frames of the Orion nebula for a while, never with satisfactory results...always still too much noise. This new technique resulted in my first fairly decent photo:
I stacked the frames in the following way:
[list type=decimal]
[*]Import as Layers to Photoshop fron LR
[*]Align all layers (did it manually, auto-align freaked out for some reason)
[*]Select first 5 layers, Layers->Smart Objects->Create
[*]Set stacking mode to mean, Layers->Smart Objects->Stack Mode->Mean
[*]Repeat 3-4 for each group of 5
[*]Rasterize each smart object
[*]Set opacity mode to (from bottom most light frame): 100%, 83%, 66%, 50%, 33%, 16%
[*]Set blending mode to Screen for all light frames
[*]Add Levels adjustment layer and correct black point, white point, and gray point to bring out most detail
[*]Tweak color, levels, curves, etc. to taste
[/list]
I discovered an intriguing new technique for stacking very short deep sky frames in photoshop, one which nearly eliminates noise without affecting detail. I've been trying to stack short (i.e. 1-2 second) frames of the Orion nebula for a while, never with satisfactory results...always still too much noise. This new technique resulted in my first fairly decent photo:
- Body: Canon EOS 7D
- Lens: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8
- Exposure: 1s f/2.8 ISO 1600
- Frames: 30
I stacked the frames in the following way:
[list type=decimal]
[*]Import as Layers to Photoshop fron LR
[*]Align all layers (did it manually, auto-align freaked out for some reason)
[*]Select first 5 layers, Layers->Smart Objects->Create
[*]Set stacking mode to mean, Layers->Smart Objects->Stack Mode->Mean
[*]Repeat 3-4 for each group of 5
[*]Rasterize each smart object
[*]Set opacity mode to (from bottom most light frame): 100%, 83%, 66%, 50%, 33%, 16%
[*]Set blending mode to Screen for all light frames
[*]Add Levels adjustment layer and correct black point, white point, and gray point to bring out most detail
[*]Tweak color, levels, curves, etc. to taste
[/list]