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Starry Landscape Stacker Procedure: David Swindler - Action Photo Tours

This document provides instructions for stacking starry landscape images using Starry Landscape Stacker software. It details recommended adjustments in Lightroom like custom white balance and noise reduction before export. It explains how to load images as lights, identify common stars as dots, create a sky mask, and refine it. It recommends the Min Horizon Noise algorithm and describes optional techniques like drawing custom dots or using different algorithms.

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Alfredo Finol
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119 views

Starry Landscape Stacker Procedure: David Swindler - Action Photo Tours

This document provides instructions for stacking starry landscape images using Starry Landscape Stacker software. It details recommended adjustments in Lightroom like custom white balance and noise reduction before export. It explains how to load images as lights, identify common stars as dots, create a sky mask, and refine it. It recommends the Min Horizon Noise algorithm and describes optional techniques like drawing custom dots or using different algorithms.

Uploaded by

Alfredo Finol
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Starry Landscape Stacker Procedure

David Swindler – Action Photo Tours


Preparing Images for Stacking
• The best stacking results are obtained from
doing the least amount of pre-processing as
possible in Lightroom or Camera RAW.
• Recommended Adjustments:
• Use Custom WB
• Increase Brightness
• Decrease Contrast
• Increase Blacks (look at left side of histogram)
• Remove Lens Vignetting and Chromatic Aberration
• Mild Color Noise Reduction
Things to Avoid
• Auto White Balance
• Adding Contrast, Clarity, and DeHaze.
• Adding Color through Vibrance, Saturation, and HSL
• Pushing the Bright Tones through Highlights and
Whites
• Noise Reduction & Sharpening
• Lens Distortion Corrections
• Move distortion to zero. Still need vignetting correction.
If done properly, the resulting image will look flat, dull, and noisy.
If too much contrast is added in pre-processing, Starry Landscape Stacker tends to blow
out the bright tones. Radial banding is especially problematic and is primarily caused
by using lens distortion corrections.
Sync and Export
• Sync your Lightroom
adjustments to the rest of your
sky images.
• Export all sky images as 16-bit
TIFF files and save them to disk.
• Can use Adobe RGB or ProPhoto
RGB.
• No image resizing
• Include all Metadata
Load Images
• Open Starry Landscape Stacker
and Open the TIFF files you just
saved.
• These files are called “Lights” by
the software.
• More advanced users can load
additional files types like Darks, Flats,
and Masks. These file types will not
be covered in this procedure.
• All your files should be brought in as
“Lights”.
Commands
• The same keyboard commands that work in Photoshop also work in
Starry Landscape Stacker:
• Command +: Zoom In
• Command -: Zoom Out
• Hold Spacebar: Brings up Hand tool to move around image
• Left Bracket Key: Reduce Brush Size
• Right Bracket Key: Increase Brush Size
Dots
• Starry Landscape Stacker finds the brightest stars that are common across
all files and identifies them as red dots. It uses these dots to try and
identify the sky vs the land.
• Automatic Dot placement will usually work best. Your job is to remove any
red dots from the landscape by using the Eraser.
• Once this is cleaned up, you will click on the Find Sky button. It should do a
good job segmenting the sky from the landscape.
• A little bit of sky/land cleanup will likely be required. Use the Paint
Sky/Land brush for that.
• If you have complicated land like trees, bridges, arches, etc, you’ll want to use
the “Mask With Islands of Sky” option.
Start With Automatic Dots
Erase Dots in Landscape – Find Sky
Create Sky Mask
Refine Sky Mask
Refine Sky Mask
Final Sky Mask
Align With
Unless there is a specific star/feature alignment you are concerned with, just align
with the center image of the sequence.
Select Composition Algorithm
Save Final File
You can save multiple TIFF files if you want to experiment with different algorithms.

Optional
No Automatic Dots
If automatic dots don’t work well, you can draw your own dots around the outer
edge and land/sky interface. You don’t have to be very exact with this.
Algorithms
• Min Horizon Noise
• Uses advanced median filtering and helps reduce noise right near the horizon line.
• Downside is that stars near the horizon will often go missing.
• This is the algorithm you will use most often.
• Min Star Duplication
• You will see more stars near the horizon, but you may see more noise and artifacts from
the stacking.
• Max
• Produces the brightest image. Useful if you want to mask in streaks from satellites or
meteors.
• Min
• Produces the darkest image. Will often highlight the Milky Way the best.
Min Horizon Noise
Note ring of
missing stars
around rock
feature.
Min Horizon Star Dup
More stars near
edges but note
numerous
stacking
artifacts.
Max Min
Horizon
Noise

Min Min
Horizon
Star Dup

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