You have to keep the dimensions proportional from start to finish meaning.... If you start with a 4x6 ratio image and then you crop, make sure your crop is also a 4x6 ratio.
@@Milkywaymike Thank you, but I am aware of that, and kept the ratio (3:2). Issue is that the resolution is different. Should I force the same resolution at export?
@@Milkywaymike Hi! Even I faced the same issue, I used the lock button to maintain the crop ratio for the set but still the dimensions are coming out to be different. Can you help me sort this out please? Thank you!
@Milkywaymike I'm stuck with this same error. Is there a way to get around the error. I'm pretty certain I followed everything to the dot here until exporting it out of LR. Anyhelp would be great. Thanks.
That is amazing, thanks. I was just looking at some videos I bookmarked years ago and one of them was yours on stacking moon photos. So then I had a look to see what newer videos you've done since, but then came across this one, which I think is a bit older, but you have it as your highlighted video on your channel. I have in the past, done a star trail image using Starstax with photos from my GoPro Hero 4, but that was just a circular star trail, not a spiral star trail. I must try this out next time, maybe even with my Canon 80D since I have that also now.
Hey Mike, hope you are home and safe! Question: I followed your Vortex Spiral Star Trail tutorial without issue......until I attempted to blend my images in StarStax. Keep getting an error message indicating that the images have different image dimensions. Makes sense since we altered the crop on all of the images so........any suggestions? Thanks, Daryl
I just found your channel and I'm pretty blown away. So far I've watched this one, and its followup (blending) and both were fantastic. Your content is amazing. I see you have a lot of stuff for me to go through.... looking forward to it. Keep it up man!
Sorry for the late response.. I'm on the road at the moment! Thank you for watching my channel.. it really helps me out. When I get back I will have some new tutorials up! Cheers
So I followed this guide to a T. You've made a very helpful video, however the final image is a complete mess for me. No gaps filled despite the box checked, and a light pole that was in the low left of my foreground has been duplicated all over. I made sure to constrain the crop with the lock function, update the metadata, and export at all the same dimensions, but I did not get a happy result. :( any ideas?
Hi Mike!amazing video, as always, One question can you make this vortex effect without Star stax but using Photoshop in order to remove plane trails as you showed in other video?
Savvas M yea you can bring the photos into photoshop and change the mode to “lighten” and it will create the star trail effect. Then paint the planes out like I do in the photoshop start trail tutorial
Great tutorial! Having a small issue over here, when I do the second save step (after auto transition) and go to lightroom and choose to read metadata from file, it reads the crop changes from the images but for some reason also changes the colors of the picture... Any idea why this happens? Also, why do I get the star trails as dots and not as trails?
Usually it changes the color when you first open it in Lightroom... After you make your color corrections and save the meta data and then bring it back to lightroom it shouldn't change again. That's weird and you may need to contact LRTimelapse about that issue. Or take a video of your screen and send it to me to see if something is missing in the steps.
Hi, I did the reverse order but can't get the vortex. No matter how, its never never a vortex. Logically the earth spin round, not in a vortex style isn't it?
The vortex has to do with lens manipulation in conjunction with earths rotation. You are still doing a normal star trail that should be around 2-3 hours long for it to work correctly. Your photos have to slowly zoom via a rotation device you can build for your lens OR you can artificially zoom in using LR Timelapse to crop each photo ever so slight to mimic zooming in.
@@Milkywaymike I'm not sure what u said will create a vortex. I know PS can do all kind of vortex without using LR timelapse feature. It has to set the parameter in degree X and Y. But certainly not what u said in the video by simply click Starstax in reverse order. Thats a lie
You have to use StarStax and select the option "save after each step". Then those saved images you bring into lightroom and export them as a video. This link is for normal star trails but the same steps would apply to do a vortex star trail video. ruclips.net/video/Du83Tn8ZEg8/видео.html You then need to mask out a foreground in Adobe Premier or Final Cut Pro like this ruclips.net/video/ZDS26CT-CTE/видео.html
Yes absolutely! The North star (or if you are in the southern hemisphere the southern most star should work) is vital to achieve the effect. It can be off-center to the left or right if you want but just make sure it is somewhere in the images!
I can’t make it work, I just get star trails without the vortex..I use two keyframes like you showed, crop the first one . Have tried this 4 times, same results.
So here is the deal, I shot a star trail by mounting the tripod on top of a car. Hence, some of the images turned out blur as it had a camera shake while some of us were getting in and out and a few of the images have panned up and down I really need help. Thanks.
This may work but I'm not positive. You can try and remove the blurry images and stack the good images. I think what will happen is you may have a couple gaps from the missing images which you can probably photoshop in the missing parts. How long was the star trail session? You only need about 2 -3 hours worth of star trail images.
So in order to get the spiral effect, I shoot towards the north star is if I were shooting a normal star tail, but turn the camera slowly over a corse of the shot. How much should I spin the camera?
You zoom in your lens slowly, not the camera. Here is the machine I built to do this so you can see what I mean. Its with a 14-24 lens and I zoomed it from 14-24 over the course of 2.5 hours. ruclips.net/video/TC7ZNRQX4HA/видео.html
Thank you for the great tutrial! I have one problem, I can't fix the order of the images. They are named from 0001 to 000185, but the program always puts them in the following order: 0001, 00010, 000100, 000101 and so on...
Do you have Adobe Bridge? You can Batch Rename them very simply if you have that program. Or you might be able to find a free program that will allow you to do a batch rename as well.
@@Milkywaymike I used Bulk Rename Utility, but no matter how I rename them, it doesn't want to put them in order. I ended up doing it manually with letters and it worked...Thanks for the reply!
Hey Mike, Thanks for the great tutorial. What are the steps or where can I find a tutorial for the star trails that show how to make the stars brighter at the beginning of the streak and dimmer at the other end? Looks like yours are in the vortex, but I'm just looking for the regular star trail, but with the "comet" effect. Thanks!
Thanks for watching! Here is a video for that using starstax - "comet mode" You can can also open your star trails in photoshop and create a similar effect but it will take longer. ruclips.net/video/6GGuPyYGOUE/видео.html
I guess we could record the screen processing the images but the quality would be reduced to the dimensions of the screen, is there a way of doing so without reducing the quality?
Like this? (the first star trail of the abandoned shack) ruclips.net/video/LXfSD-Vdk8c/видео.html The way I did that was with StarStax software.. their is an option that say "SAVE AFTER EACH STEP". Take those images then import them to lightroom (or similar software) then export them as a movie.
Thank you very much!... Good luck with with the time lapse! If you get stuck or have any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer any questions!
Short your star trail more east or west. The closer you shoot south or north the closer you are to the north and south star. Also you need to use a mid-telephoto or telephoto lens like a 50mm or longer. Here is an example at my 50mm lens shooting east- www.flickr.com/photos/versprill/39124515674/in/album-72157684483271193/
I unfortunately do not know if you can. Their are tutorials on how to do it in photoshop so if you have the same tools in PS Elements then I would imagine you can achieve the effect.
You have to lock your dimensions when you crop in... For example if you are at a 4x3 ratio and you crop in, to create the effect.. when you crop make sure it is locked at 4x3. You get a dimension error message if you start at 4x3 and then crop in manually with it unlocked because your crop doesn't match 4x3.
While in auto transition the orange frame doesn't increase equally in every picture, sometimes the width increases sometimes height increases. I think that the problem but how to fix that
So for some reason it doesn't apply the crop to all of my images whenever I read metadata from files. I didn't do anything different than you did. Was there an update that hurt this process?
Yeah man I got it, however now it's telling me I can't stack the photos because the pixel ratios are off however I kept the same ratio whenever cropping. Idk man, I'll keep working at it, nothing works the first time when it comes to photography.
Could this also work with only 40 pictures in the timelapse? I keep trying this, but I keep missing a step somewhere?... Do you have any written steps?
You need enough pictures to create the rotation.. typically 2-3 hour time lapse of stars is sufficient (200 - 400 photos depending on your exposure time.) For star trails I usually do 25 second exposures. You also need to make sure you have the North Star in your photos from start to finish as well to make it work. milkywaymike.com/2015/03/02/vortex-star-trails-tutorial/#.WodUMJM-eMI
I loved this video! It motivated me to go out and shoot my own star trail photo. I made a video of the whole process. Feel free to check it out on my page!
Luke 15:3-7 (KJV) 3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.
Thank you so much for the tutorial, but I am having an issue. Due to the crop starstax is giving an error: "Has different dimensions".
Thank you
You have to keep the dimensions proportional from start to finish meaning.... If you start with a 4x6 ratio image and then you crop, make sure your crop is also a 4x6 ratio.
@@Milkywaymike Thank you, but I am aware of that, and kept the ratio (3:2). Issue is that the resolution is different. Should I force the same resolution at export?
@@Milkywaymike Hi! Even I faced the same issue, I used the lock button to maintain the crop ratio for the set but still the dimensions are coming out to be different. Can you help me sort this out please? Thank you!
@Milkywaymike I'm stuck with this same error. Is there a way to get around the error. I'm pretty certain I followed everything to the dot here until exporting it out of LR. Anyhelp would be great. Thanks.
That is amazing, thanks. I was just looking at some videos I bookmarked years ago and one of them was yours on stacking moon photos. So then I had a look to see what newer videos you've done since, but then came across this one, which I think is a bit older, but you have it as your highlighted video on your channel. I have in the past, done a star trail image using Starstax with photos from my GoPro Hero 4, but that was just a circular star trail, not a spiral star trail. I must try this out next time, maybe even with my Canon 80D since I have that also now.
Hey Mike, hope you are home and safe! Question: I followed your Vortex Spiral Star Trail tutorial without issue......until I attempted to blend my images in StarStax. Keep getting an error message indicating that the images have different image dimensions. Makes sense since we altered the crop on all of the images so........any suggestions? Thanks, Daryl
which camera has 16bit stills & that too in near 2015 ?
& by the way I love your tutorials.
Thanks again for this tutorial... You explain it so simply.
I just found your channel and I'm pretty blown away. So far I've watched this one, and its followup (blending) and both were fantastic. Your content is amazing. I see you have a lot of stuff for me to go through.... looking forward to it. Keep it up man!
Sorry for the late response.. I'm on the road at the moment! Thank you for watching my channel.. it really helps me out. When I get back I will have some new tutorials up! Cheers
So I followed this guide to a T. You've made a very helpful video, however the final image is a complete mess for me. No gaps filled despite the box checked, and a light pole that was in the low left of my foreground has been duplicated all over. I made sure to constrain the crop with the lock function, update the metadata, and export at all the same dimensions, but I did not get a happy result. :( any ideas?
On second attempt, following this exactly. Did not get the orange box. Seems like I'll have to use a different method.
Had great success with this thanks Mike!
Awesome! I would love to see to the final product if you post it.
I love that abandoned haunted farm house! What a picture!
Success with your tutorial. Thanks a ton!
You're welcome!
Hi Mike!amazing video, as always, One question can you make this vortex effect without Star stax but using Photoshop in order to remove plane trails as you showed in other video?
Savvas M yea you can bring the photos into photoshop and change the mode to “lighten” and it will create the star trail effect. Then paint the planes out like I do in the photoshop start trail tutorial
@@Milkywaymike thank you for your quick reply, keep the great work!!!
Your channel is exactly what I needed. thanks a ton man
Thanks for watching!!
Wowwwww nice video thanks for sharing
Great tutorial! Having a small issue over here, when I do the second save step (after auto transition) and go to lightroom and choose to read metadata from file, it reads the crop changes from the images but for some reason also changes the colors of the picture... Any idea why this happens?
Also, why do I get the star trails as dots and not as trails?
Usually it changes the color when you first open it in Lightroom... After you make your color corrections and save the meta data and then bring it back to lightroom it shouldn't change again. That's weird and you may need to contact LRTimelapse about that issue. Or take a video of your screen and send it to me to see if something is missing in the steps.
Thanks for this video. I'm enjoying this...
Thanks for watching!!!
Hi, I did the reverse order but can't get the vortex. No matter how, its never never a vortex. Logically the earth spin round, not in a vortex style isn't it?
The vortex has to do with lens manipulation in conjunction with earths rotation. You are still doing a normal star trail that should be around 2-3 hours long for it to work correctly. Your photos have to slowly zoom via a rotation device you can build for your lens OR you can artificially zoom in using LR Timelapse to crop each photo ever so slight to mimic zooming in.
@@Milkywaymike I'm not sure what u said will create a vortex. I know PS can do all kind of vortex without using LR timelapse feature. It has to set the parameter in degree X and Y. But certainly not what u said in the video by simply click Starstax in reverse order. Thats a lie
Hi Mike! How do you do a vortex timelapse?
You have to use StarStax and select the option "save after each step". Then those saved images you bring into lightroom and export them as a video. This link is for normal star trails but the same steps would apply to do a vortex star trail video. ruclips.net/video/Du83Tn8ZEg8/видео.html You then need to mask out a foreground in Adobe Premier or Final Cut Pro like this ruclips.net/video/ZDS26CT-CTE/видео.html
thank you, i will try that way
sir, when shooting photo must aim to north point to get effect as show?
Yes absolutely! The North star (or if you are in the southern hemisphere the southern most star should work) is vital to achieve the effect. It can be off-center to the left or right if you want but just make sure it is somewhere in the images!
I can’t make it work, I just get star trails without the vortex..I use two keyframes like you showed, crop the first one . Have tried this 4 times, same results.
F. Norman can you record your computer screen while attempting to do the startrails so I can see what’s going on?
So here is the deal,
I shot a star trail by mounting the tripod on top of a car. Hence, some of the images turned out blur as it had a camera shake while some of us were getting in and out and a few of the images have panned up and down
I really need help.
Thanks.
This may work but I'm not positive. You can try and remove the blurry images and stack the good images. I think what will happen is you may have a couple gaps from the missing images which you can probably photoshop in the missing parts. How long was the star trail session? You only need about 2 -3 hours worth of star trail images.
Milky Way Mike I figured out this same thing and have finished with the project. Thanks for the response, appreciate it.
Soham Shintre Awesome! glad it worked out!
So in order to get the spiral effect, I shoot towards the north star is if I were shooting a normal star tail, but turn the camera slowly over a corse of the shot. How much should I spin the camera?
You zoom in your lens slowly, not the camera. Here is the machine I built to do this so you can see what I mean. Its with a 14-24 lens and I zoomed it from 14-24 over the course of 2.5 hours. ruclips.net/video/TC7ZNRQX4HA/видео.html
Thank you for the great tutrial! I have one problem, I can't fix the order of the images. They are named from 0001 to 000185, but the program always puts them in the following order: 0001, 00010, 000100, 000101 and so on...
Do you have Adobe Bridge? You can Batch Rename them very simply if you have that program. Or you might be able to find a free program that will allow you to do a batch rename as well.
@@Milkywaymike I used Bulk Rename Utility, but no matter how I rename them, it doesn't want to put them in order. I ended up doing it manually with letters and it worked...Thanks for the reply!
this is on LRtimelapse private or the pro? btw great tutorial!
private... Thanks!!
Hey Mike, Thanks for the great tutorial. What are the steps or where can I find a tutorial for the star trails that show how to make the stars brighter at the beginning of the streak and dimmer at the other end? Looks like yours are in the vortex, but I'm just looking for the regular star trail, but with the "comet" effect. Thanks!
Thanks for watching! Here is a video for that using starstax - "comet mode" You can can also open your star trails in photoshop and create a similar effect but it will take longer. ruclips.net/video/6GGuPyYGOUE/видео.html
Thanks, I will send it later...
Can you do this in photoshop, and turn it into a timelapse also in photoshop?
Their is Faux way to do vortex star trails but it doesn’t look as good… second question- no photoshop doesn’t export video files
@@Milkywaymike thanks, i do all my timelapse in photoshop at the moment and the resulsts are pretty good, might try LRtimelapse
Hey!
Can we make a timelapse of the stars moving from the first picture to the last (so we can see the light trails moving)?
I guess we could record the screen processing the images but the quality would be reduced to the dimensions of the screen, is there a way of doing so without reducing the quality?
Like this? (the first star trail of the abandoned shack) ruclips.net/video/LXfSD-Vdk8c/видео.html
The way I did that was with StarStax software.. their is an option that say "SAVE AFTER EACH STEP". Take those images then import them to lightroom (or similar software) then export them as a movie.
Yes exactly! Thanks a lot :D
And by the way, nice work! Your timelapses are so cool!
Thank you very much!... Good luck with with the time lapse! If you get stuck or have any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer any questions!
How to get straight star trail lines
Short your star trail more east or west. The closer you shoot south or north the closer you are to the north and south star. Also you need to use a mid-telephoto or telephoto lens like a 50mm or longer. Here is an example at my 50mm lens shooting east- www.flickr.com/photos/versprill/39124515674/in/album-72157684483271193/
Milky Way Mike
Ok now I understand thank you sir
Can this be done using Photoshop Elements?
I unfortunately do not know if you can. Their are tutorials on how to do it in photoshop so if you have the same tools in PS Elements then I would imagine you can achieve the effect.
genius
Thanks man 🙌
I am getting error message because of difference in image dimensions. Can anybody help me
You have to lock your dimensions when you crop in... For example if you are at a 4x3 ratio and you crop in, to create the effect.. when you crop make sure it is locked at 4x3.
You get a dimension error message if you start at 4x3 and then crop in manually with it unlocked because your crop doesn't match 4x3.
I kept the aspect ratio same while cropping still its the same
While in auto transition the orange frame doesn't increase equally in every picture, sometimes the width increases sometimes height increases. I think that the problem but how to fix that
So for some reason it doesn't apply the crop to all of my images whenever I read metadata from files. I didn't do anything different than you did. Was there an update that hurt this process?
I literally immediately discovered my problem, I wasn't in grid mode so I was applying the read metadata to a single file.
Alright cool, glad you were able to solve the problem!
Yeah man I got it, however now it's telling me I can't stack the photos because the pixel ratios are off however I kept the same ratio whenever cropping. Idk man, I'll keep working at it, nothing works the first time when it comes to photography.
i wish i can see what you are doing exactly... maybe record your screen so i can help u out.
hi, i've got the same problem as you ! have you found the answer...?
Will this work with LR timelapse 5?
It should!
Could this also work with only 40 pictures in the timelapse? I keep trying this, but I keep missing a step somewhere?... Do you have any written steps?
You need enough pictures to create the rotation.. typically 2-3 hour time lapse of stars is sufficient (200 - 400 photos depending on your exposure time.) For star trails I usually do 25 second exposures. You also need to make sure you have the North Star in your photos from start to finish as well to make it work.
milkywaymike.com/2015/03/02/vortex-star-trails-tutorial/#.WodUMJM-eMI
Thanks :)
Sam Glover good luck.. I still need to test out LR5 so it could be an issue with that as well.
I completely forgot taking pictures was a measurement of time ;D
great video though
Thanks for watching!
Joshua Tree?
Yeah this is at Joshua Tree!
Nice! I was just there last night, great shots!
Yeah, its a great place to photograph! I camped there last year.
I loved this video! It motivated me to go out and shoot my own star trail photo. I made a video of the whole process. Feel free to check it out on my page!
I will check it out!!
Holy S**t!
Luke 15:3-7 (KJV)
3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.