Holy crap man I’ve watched a dozen tutorials already and not one even comes close to your ability to really simplify it in a VERY clear way for the people looking for help and still come out with an extremely impressive image. Thank you for this tutorial!
Ian - THANK YOU!!!!! I've been striving to learn astrophotography for over a year now. Frequent posts on DP Review astro forum and I've never received advice as good as your video. I'm confident with my photography of the skies I've just not received proper instruction on how to process the images in Photoshop/Lightroom. There are videos on RUclips for it but none as clearly done as yours. It's almost like an industry secret. Thank You for doing this video!!!!!!!!!
Thank you for sharing this! I used 47 one minute tracked exposures I took over the weekend with my Nikon Z6ii (astro-modded) and followed your tutorial. Reasonably happy with the result but I may go back and try it again on another day to see how it comes out.
I am using photoshop since 7 years now. And yet I felt like a total amateur while watching this tutorial. This is one of the best photoshop tutorial and I am amazed to see the contents available in my picture after following this method. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Thank you Norman!!! It's amazing what and how much you achieve with just decent camera kit and normal Photoshop functionality. And how clearly you manage to explain a lot of complexity. You definitely made me curious, and I will be back to follow more of your tutorials.
this was so easy to follow! i mean, i'm not familiar with the process at all, but you were very clear with each step, what you were clicking and why. much appreciated
WOW. I was having trouble designing a workflow to process my Cocoon nebula and Elephant's Trunk images. I'm excited to try out your tutorial. Amazing work again, Ian!
I got my Sharp Star in the mail the other day. Now we're looking forward to getting out west in a month or so to work on some astrophotography. You are very thorough in you videos. I might have to re watch them a few dozen times to understand what you have done. The results are fantastic!
time to tear my pocket and spend money on a telescope. Thank you so much for the efforts in sharing this amazing tutorial. Ya know in my country you would pay a lot of money to give courses about these effects. Thank you again. I really appreciate it... Faisal Saudi Arabia
That's amazing honestly can't thank you enough. I've got so many photos of orion with my star tracker so hours of exposure but zero post processing skills. Will give this a go
It's amazing how photoshop has changed our view of the skies. I learnt photoshop late in life during an adult college course and the first thing our tutor said was photoshop was used for the Star Wars films...I was hooked!… these days the software has changed so much I doubt I would recognise it... what is it now CS8?? Anyway, you've shown great skill in showing us the beauty of space just using a camera....and a bit of software.. thank you for sharing your skills. 👍🏼😊
Ok that was a lot to digest in 15min, but omg dude thats amazing. I just got into AP with CMOS cameras and i wish i had half as much knowledge in Photoshop/LightRoom as you do. BADASS!!! Teach me your ways lol.
CHAMPION!! This is amazing 🙌 Need more of these kinds of tutorials that are basic enough just to stick to PS and not need 3rd party programs that cost 100's Thanks you
Thanks so much mate!!! I'm just getting into astrophotography, and your site plus these videos are REALLY helping me bring the WOW factor out in my images! THANKS!!!
This was one of my favorites! I'll be out shooting Orion as soon as we get a break in the clouds. I just used these techniques on a Milky Way Photo and love the results. Thanks Ian.
Excellent tutorial, I feel like I can easily follow along. The reasoning for each step is explained and there's no handwaving or magic. I can't wait to try this process!
Awesome video. I never knew I could stack directly in photoshop. I always stack in Deep Sky Stacker and then process in photoshop. Liked and subscribed. Cheers and clear skies!
Thank you very much! Without seeing this I had just taken a similar shot and struggled with getting colour from it. Do not have much knowledge in that part of the process. So again . .Thank you!
How in the world do you kids learn all this stuff!? I've watched this several times and I think I would need to view it about 25 more to absorb all the information! Amazing work..... Rick Tucson
This technique proved very useful, convertng my first attempt at stacking and procesing using other methods which resulted in an awful orange cast mediocre image suffused with amp glow, into a very passable much more detailed, fairly colour neutral image with which I was quite surprised. Especially considering the images were all taken using a less than perfect set up (24mm at F4 on the Sony kit zoom for my A6300) and the result for the section of Milky Way I had framed was good for that,, it made me extra keen to try out the manual F1.8 lens I haved just purchased. Thanks!
Ian, this is good. By following your tutorial I have achieved a fantastic result from some forgotten and almost discarded shots of Orion. Only that PS denied to align them together and during applying median filter the "Orion" disappeared. So I had to watch another of your Episode of Straightening horizon and individually aligned 40 frames - I just had to align the 3 stars in the belt. I also saw another channel where the photographer advises for Dithering - moving camera by couple of star Dia so that the noise reduction can be better. I will have to practice that but then if I am taking a frame every 25-30 sec, the stars will move so Dithering happens automatically. Idk - let me try and see what reduces the noise most. But as of now your tutorial is just fantastic. THANK YOU.
At 11:08min when I paste contents from detail layer to nebulosity mask, something go wrong. Mask dont look like you mask fill, but stil empty and photoshop creating new layer. What is wrong? Why mask not aksept content from copy detail but create new layer!?!?!
I have solution for my problem. Need to clik on chanels button to see mask and layers and to clik mask and paste, ther on chanels. Sorry for my bad English:))
is there a reason why "stack mode" would be greyed out? I am trying to famaliarize myself with this process using just 2 images could that have something to do with it?
Handy. Over the most recent new Moon period, I took a series of about 26 images of Orion (and about half a dozen dark frames) while staying at a dark sky location. My processing of such images has never been very good, so now I can run through the tutorial and see how my results turn out.
***** Will do. Since I have dark frames, I might try some combinations using deep sky stacker (or other software) to align and stack lights and darks, then PS to do LRGB processing etc, and see how that goes too.
Hey that's a great tutorial. I already do the median inverted layer mask stuff in my workflow but the luminance / colour layers are things I need to add as is the photoshop based stacking which removes the need for any astro stacking software. (Good for Mac users like me) Making notes on this one!
So far my output is still pretty average. I suspect there are a few reasons. 1) It's summer, so there's quite a bit of heat noise, and I didn't use the in-camera noise reduction 2) Canon 50mm f1.8 (at low f ratios) means there's a fair bit of coma, which stacking seems to make worse. 3) I should have used a higher ISO, but that makes noise more obvious. 4) I should have shot more than the dozen or so light frames. My testing continues though.
My conclusion: I need way more practise. Plus, I need to shoot with the histogram to the right more, which always seems like a bad idea when I do it because the noise looks horrendous. Until then, I have some planetary imaging data to collect and work on :-)
Is it possible to make a new video using CC? I'm new at this, just got CC recently, but they've changed EVERYTHING in the UI and this workflow doesn't seem to be possible in the latest versions.
Whoa. I had to pause and make sure you were saying the right thing: red rock canyon state park in california? 2 hours north of los angeles?! I live in Las Vegas and I'm pretty sure there's no way you can warp your vehicle two hours from the traffic of LA to Red Rock in NEVADA. I had to look it up in a map and turns out there is a red rock canyon state park north of los angeles, firmly in california. wow, you learn something new everyday. thanks!
Having a bit of trouble bringing that color back where you add the color balance and vibrance layers towards the end. Not sure if it's because I was shooting no higher than 5000 iso?
Hi, i have a problem!!!!, in the min 11:05 , when i try to copy the selection in the mask it dont copy into the mask, it copy above and i dont find who to do it... Any solution please?
Need Help! Have the same cam and the same lens but i did not get the Detail as you did. I used 28 Frames with 30sec tracked exposure at f2.8 with iso 1600. only explanation is too much light pollution? Or is there something else as possible mistake? Thank you!
Different cameras, lenses and shooting conditions affect noise for any given exposure. I was shooting with a camera that's very good in low light, a low f/number lens, and a dark, cold location. All of those things help reduce noise.
I am pretty good at Photoshop, and I'll be honest with you.............you just blew my mind with this tutorial! KUDOS! Great job.
Eric Zep j
This is when you understand He's very good at Photoshop...
Yes! Same! He is amazing!
Holy crap man I’ve watched a dozen tutorials already and not one even comes close to your ability to really simplify it in a VERY clear way for the people looking for help and still come out with an extremely impressive image. Thank you for this tutorial!
Cannot believe how this has been processed to a beautiful Nebula with out any manipulation. Great tutorial
Ian - THANK YOU!!!!! I've been striving to learn astrophotography for over a year now. Frequent posts on DP Review astro forum and I've never received advice as good as your video. I'm confident with my photography of the skies I've just not received proper instruction on how to process the images in Photoshop/Lightroom. There are videos on RUclips for it but none as clearly done as yours. It's almost like an industry secret. Thank You for doing this video!!!!!!!!!
***** that's excellent. I just noticed SLR Lounge shared this video tutorial so hopefully you'll continue to get more "exposure" :)
What I really appreciate here is that there is literally not one second of wasted time. Fantastic job - thank you.
Your tutorials are the best on RUclips!
In my opinion the best Astro photography video tutorial on RUclips.
I'm watching every video you made right now, I'm learning so much! Thank you!
Thank you for sharing this! I used 47 one minute tracked exposures I took over the weekend with my Nikon Z6ii (astro-modded) and followed your tutorial. Reasonably happy with the result but I may go back and try it again on another day to see how it comes out.
This is perhaps the best tutorial I've ever seen on processing wide angle astrophotography. You can bet I'll be trying it out. Thank you.
Best tutorial ever on astrophotography processing! Learned more in the past 5 minutes than I have in the past year!
Best tutorials on RUclips, thanks so much.
*****
Just waiting for a clear night to try it :P
The 55/1.8 is my favorite lens of all time!
WOW....that process is something else. I too applaud you sir!
I'm blown away! You sure know what you are doing...
Superb tutorial ! Isn't it incredible how much information is stored in those photos.
You make the best tutorials! very easy to follow and understand :)
Yeah... That would be on 0.10 Play Speed though.
This was mostly voodoo but its favourited and when im a little more familiar with photoshop im coming back here to absorb your wisdom... great job man
I am using photoshop since 7 years now. And yet I felt like a total amateur while watching this tutorial. This is one of the best photoshop tutorial and I am amazed to see the contents available in my picture after following this method. Thank you so much for sharing this.
This is one of the most helpful tutorials out there. From a fellow Ian, thank you!
Fantastic tutorial!! This really helped me take a Milky Way closeup and make it look surreal!!
Wow - what a tutorial. I learnt so much from this one. Thanks much!
I have recently started getting into astrophotography and your videos are proving to be an enormous help. Many thanks.
geraberl thanks!
One quick question. When you were shooting were you shooting RAW or JPEG?
geraberl always shoot in raw
Thank you Norman!!! It's amazing what and how much you achieve with just decent camera kit and normal Photoshop functionality.
And how clearly you manage to explain a lot of complexity.
You definitely made me curious, and I will be back to follow more of your tutorials.
Thanks Ian! I know I saw that but didn't catch the alignment part. Your videos are so helpful I can't wait to shoot some of my own!
This was more a demonstration video than a tutorial. Good skills.
this was so easy to follow! i mean, i'm not familiar with the process at all, but you were very clear with each step, what you were clicking and why. much appreciated
I don't know what I would do without you! Thank you very much for all of your work :)
WOW. I was having trouble designing a workflow to process my Cocoon nebula and Elephant's Trunk images. I'm excited to try out your tutorial. Amazing work again, Ian!
I got my Sharp Star in the mail the other day. Now we're looking forward to getting out west in a month or so to work on some astrophotography. You are very thorough in you videos. I might have to re watch them a few dozen times to understand what you have done. The results are fantastic!
Thank you, Ian. I am looking now forward to the beginning of astrophotography season.
Excellent tutorial. Great work and effort.
This is one of the best astrophotography tutorial I've seen yet!
Very nice video dude! Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
time to tear my pocket and spend money on a telescope. Thank you so much for the efforts in sharing this amazing tutorial. Ya know in my country you would pay a lot of money to give courses about these effects.
Thank you again. I really appreciate it...
Faisal
Saudi Arabia
Amazing Ian! Thank you so much for showing your workflow.
Fantastic Ian, for someone just starting astro photography, this was great!
Absolutely stunning. Thank you! Have a great new year.
wow, this is the most technical tutorial I've ever seen. It's going to take me some time to follow your methodology
Yeah... May be going back to “Etch A Sketch”...
Outstanding, brilliant tutorial. Thanks a lot, Ian!
Awesome tutorial! Going to test this out in southern france in a couple of weeks.
This is very well done Ian. Thanks
Amazing tutorial! very useful to all astrophotographers! Good work :)
Ian you have been a great inspiration to me!
That's amazing honestly can't thank you enough. I've got so many photos of orion with my star tracker so hours of exposure but zero post processing skills. Will give this a go
It's amazing how photoshop has changed our view of the skies. I learnt photoshop late in life during an adult college course and the first thing our tutor said was photoshop was used for the Star Wars films...I was hooked!… these days the software has changed so much I doubt I would recognise it... what is it now CS8??
Anyway, you've shown great skill in showing us the beauty of space just using a camera....and a bit of software.. thank you for sharing your skills. 👍🏼😊
Superb tutorial, Very easy to follow and understand. Thank you!
can't help commenting here. such a good tutorial. thank you Ian!
Excellent!! Thanks for sharing this tutorial, I reprocessed and image of Andromeda and now it certainly looks better
Ok that was a lot to digest in 15min, but omg dude thats amazing. I just got into AP with CMOS cameras and i wish i had half as much knowledge in Photoshop/LightRoom as you do. BADASS!!! Teach me your ways lol.
CHAMPION!!
This is amazing 🙌
Need more of these kinds of tutorials that are basic enough just to stick to PS and not need 3rd party programs that cost 100's
Thanks you
Thanks so much mate!!! I'm just getting into astrophotography, and your site plus these videos are REALLY helping me bring the WOW factor out in my images!
THANKS!!!
Loved this tutorial! Can't wait to try out some photo stacking
the stacking is the easy part... What an awesome tutorial.
Ian this is really good - great job in explaining well done! thanks for posting
This was one of my favorites! I'll be out shooting Orion as soon as we get a break in the clouds. I just used these techniques on a Milky Way Photo and love the results. Thanks Ian.
Amazing Tutorial, and awe-inspiring images, or an untracked-fixed camera! Keep up with such good work! Best regards from Brazil
Would love to see this updated for Adobe CC suite.
Excellent tutorial, I feel like I can easily follow along. The reasoning for each step is explained and there's no handwaving or magic. I can't wait to try this process!
Now thats truly amazing....Love your videos Ian, have used your tut's so much...Thanks again
Awesome video. I never knew I could stack directly in photoshop. I always stack in Deep Sky Stacker and then process in photoshop. Liked and subscribed.
Cheers and clear skies!
finally a well detailled tutorial ! Best of all
Fantastic tutorial, thanks!
And Red Rock, brilliant. I'm in LA too so that's an easy drive to make it worthwhile.
Awesome video, I'm going to be in the mountains next week and death valley next month. Definitely will be giving this a try.
This video is gold to me, thanks for sharing your work!
Your tutorial videos are outstanding. Exceptional work.
Extremely details and fine tuned tutorial.... Thanks for it.
You're my hero. I'm doing this on the next clear night!
Thank you very much! Without seeing this I had just taken a similar shot and struggled with getting colour from it. Do not have much knowledge in that part of the process. So again . .Thank you!
Wow This just blew my mind away :D really good stuff, keep up the good work. I cant wait to get a chance at a night sky again !!!
Fantastic video. Many thanks and have a great New Year.
How in the world do you kids learn all this stuff!? I've watched this several times and I think I would need to view it about 25 more to absorb all the information! Amazing work.....
Rick
Tucson
Love your videos Ian, keep them coming!
Very nice tutorial! THANK YOU SOOO MUCH Ian!
Wonderful, detailed tutorial, can't wait to try it on my own
This video made me subscribe. Love how you explain everything. Keep doing that!!
This technique proved very useful, convertng my first attempt at stacking and procesing using other methods which resulted in an awful orange cast mediocre image suffused with amp glow, into a very passable much more detailed, fairly colour neutral image with which I was quite surprised.
Especially considering the images were all taken using a less than perfect set up (24mm at F4 on the Sony kit zoom for my A6300) and the result for the section of Milky Way I had framed was good for that,, it made me extra keen to try out the manual F1.8 lens I haved just purchased. Thanks!
Ian, this is good. By following your tutorial I have achieved a fantastic result from some forgotten and almost discarded shots of Orion. Only that PS denied to align them together and during applying median filter the "Orion" disappeared. So I had to watch another of your Episode of Straightening horizon and individually aligned 40 frames - I just had to align the 3 stars in the belt. I also saw another channel where the photographer advises for Dithering - moving camera by couple of star Dia so that the noise reduction can be better. I will have to practice that but then if I am taking a frame every 25-30 sec, the stars will move so Dithering happens automatically. Idk - let me try and see what reduces the noise most. But as of now your tutorial is just fantastic. THANK YOU.
At 11:08min when I paste contents from detail layer to nebulosity mask, something go wrong. Mask dont look like you mask fill, but stil empty and photoshop creating new layer. What is wrong? Why mask not aksept content from copy detail but create new layer!?!?!
I have solution for my problem. Need to clik on chanels button to see mask and layers and to clik mask and paste, ther on chanels. Sorry for my bad English:))
Wow! the best tutorial ever on using photoshop for astro photography, two of my hobbies combined :-)
Excellent tutorial. Thanks!
Really really great tutorial. Thanks for your help
Really great tutorial, great job. thank you
is there a reason why "stack mode" would be greyed out? I am trying to famaliarize myself with this process using just 2 images could that have something to do with it?
did you convert them to a smart object? I remember reading that "stack mode" is greyed out in a specific version of photoshop.
awesome tutorial i cant wait to get started on my processing!
outstanding! great images! and love your video tutorials
Handy. Over the most recent new Moon period, I took a series of about 26 images of Orion (and about half a dozen dark frames) while staying at a dark sky location. My processing of such images has never been very good, so now I can run through the tutorial and see how my results turn out.
***** Will do. Since I have dark frames, I might try some combinations using deep sky stacker (or other software) to align and stack lights and darks, then PS to do LRGB processing etc, and see how that goes too.
Looks like a good tutorial, thanks! I wouldn't mind doing some orion wide field stuff soon too.
Hey that's a great tutorial. I already do the median inverted layer mask stuff in my workflow but the luminance / colour layers are things I need to add as is the photoshop based stacking which removes the need for any astro stacking software. (Good for Mac users like me) Making notes on this one!
So far my output is still pretty average. I suspect there are a few reasons.
1) It's summer, so there's quite a bit of heat noise, and I didn't use the in-camera noise reduction
2) Canon 50mm f1.8 (at low f ratios) means there's a fair bit of coma, which stacking seems to make worse.
3) I should have used a higher ISO, but that makes noise more obvious.
4) I should have shot more than the dozen or so light frames.
My testing continues though.
My conclusion: I need way more practise. Plus, I need to shoot with the histogram to the right more, which always seems like a bad idea when I do it because the noise looks horrendous. Until then, I have some planetary imaging data to collect and work on :-)
Really awesome! Nice job. Ill be trying this first clear night.
Brilliant tutorial, really helpful. Thanks for sharing.
Is it possible to make a new video using CC? I'm new at this, just got CC recently, but they've changed EVERYTHING in the UI and this workflow doesn't seem to be possible in the latest versions.
The best tutorial ever, thank you...
I will try this Summer in NZ with my stock camera and 50 1.2
need to find a really dark location though.
Thanks for your valuable tutorial
Thank you Ian. Great tutorial.
mindblowing bro,exceptional job.
Whoa. I had to pause and make sure you were saying the right thing: red rock canyon state park in california? 2 hours north of los angeles?! I live in Las Vegas and I'm pretty sure there's no way you can warp your vehicle two hours from the traffic of LA to Red Rock in NEVADA.
I had to look it up in a map and turns out there is a red rock canyon state park north of los angeles, firmly in california. wow, you learn something new everyday. thanks!
Having a bit of trouble bringing that color back where you add the color balance and vibrance layers towards the end. Not sure if it's because I was shooting no higher than 5000 iso?
I have Photoshop CC and it can't align my pictures at all, it tries to make a panorama and the Blend Images Together box is not ticked.
Same here :-) did you manage to solve it?
@@henriqueOvermelho no, I aligned them manually.
Hi, i have a problem!!!!, in the min 11:05 , when i try to copy the selection in the mask it dont copy into the mask, it copy above and i dont find who to do it... Any solution please?
Make sure to Alt-click (or Option+click) the layer mask before pasting.
Need Help! Have the same cam and the same lens but i did not get the Detail as you did. I used 28 Frames with 30sec tracked exposure at f2.8 with iso 1600. only explanation is too much light pollution? Or is there something else as possible mistake? Thank you!
Thanks again for the great tutorial!!!
How do you not gain so much noise beacuse i get noise even with a 800 ISO
Different cameras, lenses and shooting conditions affect noise for any given exposure. I was shooting with a camera that's very good in low light, a low f/number lens, and a dark, cold location. All of those things help reduce noise.