How to Edit Simple Tracked Milky Way Photography
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- Опубликовано: 26 окт 2024
- Today I'd like to continue my series on nightscape post processing. We'll be looking at how to edit simple tracked milky way photography. The subject of todays video will be the single tree I showed in last weeks video.
I love to use the star tracker but in this video I'll be keeping it simple. No crazy hard edits, just straight forward so you can follow along with your own images.
I'll be keen to read your comments down below.
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Thinking this is one of your best editing shows , really enjoy it thanks
I really appreciate that Phillip.
Thanks for one more great video. Your editing using StarXTerminator has really inspired me to do a better editing of my images. Thanks a lot :-)
I'm really pleased you enjoyed the video Niels, thanks for watching.
Stunning thanks for sharing ❤
You're very welcome.
Thanks heaps Richard. Great video. I haven't heard of StarXTerminator before, but I looks like it does a much better job then just using Photoshop to do a star minimisation . Will have to check it out.
Cheers
Thanks for watching John. It is a paid product but I think well worth the price. It was designed for deep space photography but I find it works really well with nightscapes.
Changing blend mode for star reduction is very easy compared to other methods. Thanks a lot.
Yes it is . .but it only works because the stars are removed by the StarXTerminator plugin. Thanks for looking.
Excellent explanation of how to use StarXterminator. I now understand how to add the stars back in. This is a real difference maker. Editing the "starless" layer in Camera Raw and then adding back in the stars only layer is the way to go. Thanks.
Yes I think it certainly simplifies the whole process John.
Thanks Richard, very well explained, it gives me hope for when the weather actually allows me to get out there, hopefully I can emulate this in some fashion😂
Thanks a lot Nick. Yes it's been very wet over here as well.
Great lesson! People like you makes the difference! Thanks for the knowledge transmitted!
Thank you so much for watching my friend.
Thanks Richard. Great result! If I got more than 3-4 clear nights a year, I might consider purchasing a tracker.
Yes it is often a problem David. Always happy to help where I can.
Very good tutorial, well done. I tried your method on one of my pictures and I am happy with the result. Cheers.
I'm really pleased to hear that Bernard. Thanks for watching.
Beautiful Richard, again thank you for your tips and tricks. I love seeing what new processes you work with, it helps me so much. 👍
Thanks a lot Dennis, I really appreciate that.
Hi Richard, Thank you so much for this comprehensive video. I'll be going back to this again and again.
😊
I'm so pleased you find it helpful Patty. Thanks for watching.
Thank you very much for your fabulous video, absolutely brilliant work.
I appreciate you watching as always Phil
Hi Richard, I also love your work. I have become a bit of a clone to using your procedures and have found them extremely helpful in the purchase of equipment, photo setups in the field and processing my photos afterwards. I can't thank you enough really. I look forward to coming up into Central Victoria to taste what you experience. Thanks again for all your help and useful tips along the way. I will continue to follow you closely as I don't think there is anyone better.
I very much appreciate your kind comments Geoff. Thanks for your support my friend.
What a fantastic tutorial Richard. Thanks for sharing your technique very imformative. Boy oh Boy the Nikon Z6 and Z6ii are such a super cameras for astro photography.
Oh the man behind the lens has a lot to do with it also!!!
Haha, yes it's amazing what a good camera can achieve Frank ...!!!! Thanks heaps for watching my friend.
Actually, best editing I’ve seen while keeping the integrity of the subject. Jeez Buddy.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thanks so much for watching my friend, really appreciated.
Thanks, Richard!! What a beautiful Image and your instruction is so helpful!!!
I'm very pleased you enjoyed the video Gary, thanks as always.
Another great video ritchard
Thanks so much for watching Tree Man.
Fantastic, I learned a lot. I love your method of using an ambient light image with several light painted images and using the Lighten blend mode to pull it all together with the sky replacement. Great reminder to think in the field how you'll edit when you get home so you can be sure to capture what you need.
Thanks again Cheryl. Yes there are always many ways to go about editing these images. . but I've found that a little preparation while in the fields makes it a lot easier later.
Such a great video full of valuable info and knowledge. Learnt so many things from this video and thank you Richard.. A best teacher..
You're very kind as always Virat, thank you.
Thank you very much Richard.
I'm able to edit very easily now.
You're very welcome Rogerio
That’s fantastic. I haven’t used Sky Replacement yet but if it can do that with leaves and trees then I’m sold.
It's absolutely brilliant . .I use it all the time.
Great video and a beautiful final image - thanks for sharing Richard & greetings from the UK!
Thanks so much for watching Darrel, really appreciated.
Nice work Richard, keeping it simple (after years of experience).
Haha, yes that's often the secret Paul. Thanks for watching.
Wonderful image and clear, concise explanation of post processing Richard. I love the end result with your subtle tweaking of the sky and foreground.
Thanks a lot Bob, always appreciate your comments.
Just great work Richard
Thanks as always for watching Jeff
Awesome! Thank you Richard
I really appreciate you watching Dom
Totally new at this and just obtained a used MSM tracker to try my first tracked Milky Way shots. So happy to have stumbled across your videos and now I have subscribed. Thanks you for sharing your vast knowledge with the rest of us!
I'm really pleased you're finding the videos helpful.
Great new workflow Richard!
Thanks so much for watching Chuck.
Great work Richard!!
Thank you so much for watching my friend.
Another great video Richard, I find your presentation concise and easy to follow very well done. Clear skies 🖖
I'm really pleased you enjoyed it Gavin, thank you.
That is an information dense 35 minutes there Richard, really well done with the pacing and breakdown.
Thanks a lot for watching Dominic, always appreciate your comments.
I love your work, there is poetry in what you do. thanks for everything you teach us with your videos.🙏
That's very kind of you to say Rino. Thanks so much for watching.
I've been working at this a while now. The key bit for me is the quality of the starting image - I would be more than happy to just get that! Full frame and 14mm f2.8 in a dark sky region of Northern NZ, well it gets me some interesting stuff, but nothing like that image. Always a little clouds or mist here, rarely black and sharp.Tracking away, but really is it competing with that clear dark sky you have in Australia? I'm beginning to think not! I suspect none of my imaging skills will ever bring out something that is not recorded by the camera in the first place. Time for a holiday in a desert location I think.
Thanks for watching Robert. Yes I think it's important to get away to a dark sky location but you can still get some quality images in a brighter spot. To be honest, the key is the post production .. .and that's what this video is all about.
This is pretty much how I edit my nightscapes, these days. Love the light painting so much that I started doing it myself in some of my shots. I am kind of jealous of how the milky way is seen from Australia. Lovely little video.
Thank you so much for watching Laurentiu. I appreciate your comments.
Exactly what I was searching for
I'm really pleased you found it helpful.
Double 👍👍
Thank you for watching Philip
Great image! Your editing techniques are extremely helpful.
I'm about a month behind on watching videos, because of my trip to New Mexico, so it's good to be catching up on all this. This one will help me with a couple of the sets I was shooting. Thank you.
No worries at all Derek. The videos are not going anywhere. I hope you enjoyed the trip to New Mexico.
superb
Thanks so much for watching.
As you were tweaking the light painted illumination on the lower right, I'm surprised you didn't use the opacity slider. I think it gives you better control over the overall illumination of that layer. Just a thought.
Thanks again for a fabulous presentation (and image)!!
Thanks for taking a look Gordon. Yes you may be right, although I'm always aware of sometimes adding a "Milky" look with half transparent layers in photoshop.
THANKYOU...
Thank you for watching Phoenix
Очень познавательно !!! У вас серьезные познания программ!!! Спасибо ☺️
I'm so pleased you enjoyed it my friend.
Great video. It has so much detail so beautiful. I wish I can take images like that. I’m learning how to to take better Milky Way images. Going to have to wait until next year to photograph the Milky Way. It’s low in the sky but for you in Australia it’s high in the sky.
Thanks so much for watching. Yes we have quite a few more weeks of really good viewing of the core. . so I'll see if I can get some more shots soon.
Doing a little editing is sometimes doing a lot, your editing was glorious, congratulations and Thank you Richard
Thank you so much for watching Mario, really appreciate your comments.
A marvellous edit Richard, as you say the most important thing is getting the frames in the field with a view to what you’ll be doing in post. I’ll most certainly add an “Ambient” shot into my field workflow, but as you know for me that’ll be next season. Thanks Richard for such a great resource to refer to.👏👏
I'm glad you liked it Carl. Thanks so much for your comments.
I have learnt more from your 35min video than the sum of all others I’ve watched over the last 3 months! The only missing part form this series on the lonely tree is a tutorial on your star tracker. The hardware, the process in the field and the post processing at home. Thank you so much. I love your channel! ❤
Thanks so much my friend. I will be presenting more videos on star trackers this year.
Hello Richard! Fantastic tutorial. Thanks for the thorough explanation and walk through of the whole editing process. One question - you mentioned that you didn't refocus from infinity when shooting the foreground images. Was it just that you didn't need to in that instance, or is there some other benefit?
Thanks for watching Robert. Well it's always good to not have to refocus as you avoid Focus Breathing .. which can introduce a dark shadow around the foreground.
@@nightscapeimages.richard Thanks Richard. I neglected to consider the focus breathing aspect. Thankfully, the new Z lenses have very little of that. Not sure how your 20mm f1.8 is, but with my 14-24mm f2.8 and 35mm f1.8 I find it's minimal, but still something to consider. Cheers!
Thank you Richard for another great video. I have followed you on RUclips for a few years now & have learned & been greatly inspired by your Astrophotography videos. I am currently at the Kingston on Murray Campsite & was last night photographing the Milky Way. I met up with Rachael while I was photographing the nights sky & after chatting she said that she was related to you as you are married to her Uncle’s sister. I told her that I have learned my skills from watching your videos & will always continue to be inspired by your work.
I was trying to use my Skywatcher Star Tracker to do a Pano last night but got a bit frustrated with the difficulties I was having with lining up the images etc. I was wondering if you are able to do a video on this in the future or give me some advice. Thanks again on the great education & information you share with us like minded people 😀
Thanks so much for your support Cathy, I really appreciate your support. It's amazing who you see out there under the stars isn't it ..!! At some stage I will do a video on post processing tracked panoramas. It's tricky but ultimately not a lot different to other tracked shots. Yes I think that getting the correct amount of overlap and alignment on each panel is the hardest part.
Thanks Richard. I look forward to learning more with your future videos 😀
Hi Richard, congrats on another beautiful image. Just a question, do you ever use Topaz Denoise or Sharpen?
Thanks for watching Ivan. Yes I do often use Topaz de-noise AI but usually only on long exposure foregrounds.
Great video. Instead of creating the rough mask to eliminate the sky for the light painted images, could you have used the star elimination tool instead and go through the same steps you went through on the sky image to create a star mask that would target only the stars? I would think that might be more precise than the rough mask.
Hey Ken, it may well work but it takes quite a while to do it's work . .I skipped past this in the video to save time. The other thing is that I have noticed that the foreground is affected as well when you use the StarXTerminator tool, so it may well eliminate other bits .. maybe I should try it. Thanks for watching.
Very instructive explanation, just awesome
Can the StarXterminator plug in be worked in the classic Sequator group of photos or only in star trakker photos.. I didnt have star tramker but love ti give a try in my MW photos that have from Sequator or maybe in others single shots.
Well I don't see why not Luis. In fact I may just give that a try and see what happens. The StarXTerminator program is designed for deep space photography so I'm guessing a lot of people are not using it for nightscapes.
Amazing video as always! Quick question for you! Would you be willing to do a video on this same process of blending a tracked sky with a foreground but instead of blending in a light painted foreground could you do a tutorial on blending in a long exposure foreground? I’ve found the process to be a bit different as the long exposure foreground will have a much brighter sky as compared to light painted images.
Yes that's a very good idea and I will get around to that at some stage. I've been doing quite a few long exposure foregrounds lately. Thanks for watching.
@@nightscapeimages.richard awesome thanks so much for all your amazing content! Looking forward to it 😃
Ciao Richard, Luca, dall Italia... Tantissimi complimenti per i tuoi video. Sto cercando di imparare la tua tecnica, davvero spettacolare.... Una domanda... Che torcia usi per questo tipo di light painting, e con quali °Kelvin? Grazie mille. E a presto. ⭐
Thanks so much for watching Luca. I use an LED Lenser P7 torch but there are many others that will work just fine. I also tape a 1/2 cto gel across the front to help balance the colour a bit better. See here: www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/44201-REG/Rosco_RS340811_3408_Filter_RoscoSun.html
brilliant video!!... whats your opinion on using the Starnet++ instead of using the star xterminator?
Well I think the only advantage is that it's free. However Starnet++ isn't a direct plugin to photoshop.
Another fantastic video, you make it look so easy Richard. . I followed along with Star xterminator work flow but when I get to merge visible, all the stars come back. It looks perfect on the monitor before merging. Any ideas why? Level of Ps frustation very high. This seems to be a much easier method than others and I would like to be able to make it work. I would have no clue what to do without you! Thank you
Hey Kim. I have had that issue and to be honest I'm not sure why. I think you may find that not all the stars come back .. just some of them. One option is to try changing the blend mode on the stars only layer and see what that does. I agree it's a much better method than others and worth persisting with. Let me know how you go.
Hello Richard. I've really been enjoying your videos for a couple of years. I appreciate the time, effort and enthusiasm you put into your wonderful videos.
I recently bought a new Mac Mini to replace my failing 8 year old iMac for my photo editing tasks. Being a desktop machine, it requires a separate monitor or 2.
I'm curious what monitor(s) you currently use for your work. Specifically, what resolution you prefer. Have you tried both 2k and 4k and do you see a difference that justifies the more expensive 4k?
It may be an interesting topic for a video as well.
Thanks for your time.
Kevin
Thanks so much for your kind words of encouragement Kevin, I really appreciate your support. I'm currently using a 2k monitor from Asus I think it's a VA27 AQSB I find it fantastic. I've never liked 4k monitors especially for text and other uses. Hope that's helpful.
Hi Richard, is the StarXterminator plugin similar to PixInsight’s Dynamic background extraction that John Rutter uses for his amazing panos, asking as StarXterminator is less costly for what I’d need.
No they are two different things Alasdair. StarXterminator removes the stars from the image so you can edit the nebulosity separately, this is very handy indeed. Pixinsights Dynamic background extraction is more like a gradient and vignette removal tool designed primarily for deep sky images. See here: jonrista.com/the-astrophotographers-guide/pixinsights/dynamicbackgroundextraction/
@@nightscapeimages.richard I really appreciate your help as always Richard, thank you
Have you tried something like a 4 minute tracked exposure with say iso 400, I've always wondered what a single 4 minute image would look like noise wise
I think that's what a lot of people do Rob .. maybe I'll try it next time.
@@nightscapeimages.richard be interesting to see if it makes a huge difference or not, because that single in this image looks clean as
Hello how are you? Do you have any video explaining how and why the nitrogen chamber modification seems to me. Another question is what is the name of the star reduction filter plugin. Strong hug!
Thanks so much for watching Marcelo. I don't have any videos explaining the technical details of the H-alpha mod. In simple terms .. it helps the camera see more of the red/magenta wavelengths. The star removal filter is called. StarXTerminator. See here: www.rc-astro.com/resources/StarXTerminator/
Hi Richard,
For the Foreground , Did you use stock camera?
I did not see any pinkish color of the astro mod cam on foreground.
No I used the same camera for both sets of images. I did light the foreground with my 1/2 cto gel torch .. which helps a lot.
@@nightscapeimages.richard The WB and Colour tone does not look pink at all. This is very good.
@@akkarparkiamopas3401 Yes it works well.
Hi Richard,
Have you upgraded your Star X terminator latest version 2.0.6?
Do you know what is "Large Tile Overlap" tick box for?
Before we click process, there will be this tick box there.
Thanks
Yes I am using the latest version of StarXterminator. I leave that tick box unchecked generally but this is from their website.
Added a "Large Tile Overlap" option to increase the overlap between processing tiles to 50% from the default 20%. On most images, the default is sufficient to prevent artifacts at tile edges. On some images, particularly those with extremely large, bright stars, dense/busy star fields, and large, very bright objects with high contrast to their surroundings (e.g., M42), the larger tile overlap will produce a much smoother result. Note that this will increase processing time significantly, on the order of 3x. Only select this option if you notice tiling artifacts with the default setting.
@@nightscapeimages.richard Thanks a lot for that. I could not find that explanation on their website. That s why it took so long to finish processing as I ticked that box.
Stars in your pictures' corners are as sharp as the ones in the middle. I have the same lens, use similar or identical settings and mine are always trailing at the corners and not sharp. Any ideas?
I usually stop the lens down a bit rather than shooting it wide open . .that helps a lot.
@@nightscapeimages.richard thanks Richard
I have seen a lot of your videos and I am starting to wonder: don't you ever get enough of making the same pictures over and over? Okay, the foregrounds are different, but it is always the same Milky way. Don't get me wrong, the pictures are great, but there is so little variation.
Thanks a lot for watching. Yes you are correct ... but that is life. As I've said before it's all about the foreground for me.
Absolutely, he should take another milkyway 😂
Great teaching tutorial Richard 🫶 Looking at the "Sky Replacement" panel, the "sky's" you had saved also had their foreground in them. Can you save an entire image as "sky" and use later? Thanks again.
Yes I usually still have a little bit of foreground in my tracked sky images. This tends to give a more realistic blend as the atmosphere changes as it gets closer to the ground. Of course you can use just a sky with no foreground but it always depends on the focal length lens used and how high the camera is pointed to shoot.