Hi Mike, I have watched your video on star trail (Lincoln Harrison) inspiration based that I enjoyed. In combination with the current video, I much better understand your workflow with the blend mode with opacity at the beginning and the end of your sets of the shots. In order to widen the lines of the stars to increase the effect, do you think that slightly making the focus of the stars a bit soft during the capture so the lines are not so thin when stitched? That way, the lines made by the stars would be wider and more filled with colours. Thanks for any advice you can share! Really enjoyed your video. Thanks for sharing! Regards.
just watched your video again when you were changing the opacity. did you go up to 100 % then back down to zero ? and do you skip a few layers sporadically ?
With the star trail layers if you want to create comet effect with your star trails you can play around with the opacity. So for example if you had 100 photos creating a star trail you can make the first photo 100% opacity the second 99% and so on & so on until you get down to zero (or 1%) with the last photo. This will taper the star trail from thicker star trail at the beginning which gradually changes down to a thinner and faded tail end (some call this the comet effect which is also in the program StarStax). You can also do the effect in reverse going from 1% to 100%. Another effect I like to do to smooth out my star trails is to set the middle of the set at 100% and taper both the front and rear end of the star trail down to 1%. Basically in the video I was showing the star trails at 100% and then I started tapering down to zero which gives the star trails a different look and feel instead of keeping every one at 100%. Hopefully this explanation makes sense.
When editing, you change the white balance, I saw that there were several more blue and other less saturated photos and others that were greener, which is why the star trail has blue and orange tones?
The white balanced changed since I leave it on auto and then I just fine tune it later in lightroom. As long as you are shooting in raw you don't necessarily have to worry too much about the WB.
on your last 10 stacked images the first very low opacity as you got to the middle 100% opacity how did you get the first one so low and also didnt notice any comet mode effect plus all ten stacked images they all rotating the same way mine dont first 100 stacked going one the next 100 the opposite way jst curious what i did wrong plus if this is too much give an answer totally understand
Nice trick man i might need to revisit some old comps
wow thx mike!
Hi Mike, I have watched your video on star trail (Lincoln Harrison) inspiration based that I enjoyed. In combination with the current video, I much better understand your workflow with the blend mode with opacity at the beginning and the end of your sets of the shots. In order to widen the lines of the stars to increase the effect, do you think that slightly making the focus of the stars a bit soft during the capture so the lines are not so thin when stitched? That way, the lines made by the stars would be wider and more filled with colours. Thanks for any advice you can share! Really enjoyed your video. Thanks for sharing! Regards.
this is fantastic thank you
just watched your video again when you were changing the opacity. did you go up to 100 % then back down to zero ? and do you skip a few layers sporadically ?
With the star trail layers if you want to create comet effect with your star trails you can play around with the opacity. So for example if you had 100 photos creating a star trail you can make the first photo 100% opacity the second 99% and so on & so on until you get down to zero (or 1%) with the last photo. This will taper the star trail from thicker star trail at the beginning which gradually changes down to a thinner and faded tail end (some call this the comet effect which is also in the program StarStax). You can also do the effect in reverse going from 1% to 100%. Another effect I like to do to smooth out my star trails is to set the middle of the set at 100% and taper both the front and rear end of the star trail down to 1%. Basically in the video I was showing the star trails at 100% and then I started tapering down to zero which gives the star trails a different look and feel instead of keeping every one at 100%. Hopefully this explanation makes sense.
@Milkywaymike yes it does make sense appreciate input hope to improve my star trail photography
Thanx for the helpful video. How do you get the colors in the start tail? I don't seem to capture that many colors myself
Under expose your images. Try iso 2000 shutter 25 seconds F4. Although the ISO might vary depending on how much light pollution is in the area.
Been trying figure out how to do this so the radio blur you used here was Photoshop radio blur ? And again thanks for your video
Yes, you can ad a little bit of Radial blur in photoshop to smooth out the star trails.
@Milkywaymike thanks for replying back really enjoy your videos
When editing, you change the white balance, I saw that there were several more blue and other less saturated photos and others that were greener, which is why the star trail has blue and orange tones?
I noticed that you change the white balance after a few dozen photos? how many different white balance did you use?
The white balanced changed since I leave it on auto and then I just fine tune it later in lightroom. As long as you are shooting in raw you don't necessarily have to worry too much about the WB.
on your last 10 stacked images the first very low opacity as you got to the middle 100% opacity how did you get the first one so low and also didnt notice any comet mode effect plus all ten stacked images they all rotating the same way mine dont first 100 stacked going one the next 100 the opposite way jst curious what i did wrong plus if this is too much give an answer totally understand
This is just what I needed. With the onset of winter, I'll have a ideal conditions. More power to you . And Thanks for this 👍
You're welcome!
Why bother to increase opacity by 1-5 %? Why not just stack all the photos without adjusting the opacity?
It’s smooths out the tails of the star trails when you adjust the opacity making it less abrupt then just stacking them.