Aligning solar eclipse images

Eric Gagne:
I took 33 pictures of the solar eclipse today, 1 every 5 minutes.  The images are good and I would like to create a timelapse but tracking was not perfect so they are misaligned.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to align them in PixInsight, Photoshop or anything else ?

AutoStakkert or astrosurface.

I didn’t need to align them in the sense of registering them for stacking.  Those were not to be stacked.  In this case I meant shifting the sun in the images to whatever position they needed to be in order to create a time lapse of the eclipse.

i ended up loading my images into layers in photoshop and aligning them by hand one layer at a time.

Shadow projection is different as the moon progress across Sun's disk. I think as long as no pixel is saturated (or close to) the issue may be fixable, possibly using IRIS. I wonder whether LinearFit would work as well…

Eric Gagne:
I took 33 pictures of the solar eclipse today, 1 every 5 minutes.  The images are good and I would like to create a timelapse but tracking was not perfect so they are misaligned.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to align them in PixInsight, Photoshop or anything else ?

In Photoshop: File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack. The dialog will give you an option to align.

This worked well for me when the meridian flip really mucked up 1/3 of my images.

You can then create the Timelapse in Photoshop, which is what I usually do.

Ryan Faulkner:

Eric Gagne:
I took 33 pictures of the solar eclipse today, 1 every 5 minutes.  The images are good and I would like to create a timelapse but tracking was not perfect so they are misaligned.

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to align them in PixInsight, Photoshop or anything else ?

In Photoshop: File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack. The dialog will give you an option to align.

This worked well for me when the meridian flip really mucked up 1/3 of my images.

You can then create the Timelapse in Photoshop, which is what I usually do.

That's how I loaded them in layers but the align option did not work.

I don't think PI is the right tool for the alignment. The method I used for alignment was in PS where you load the files as layers and align them manually. You will find, as I noted above, that the apparent size of the Moon/Sun is larger for brighter images, I think due to saturation of regions of the near corona. You can live with this or resize those images using the Transform tool (center the Sun/Moon best you can against the darker images before resizing). Then vary the opacity of each layer till you get the result you want. The layers can then be combined and subsequent editing done either directly in PS or saved as TIFF and edited in PI or other software.  This is my result. I didn't bother to resize the images, just centered them:

https://astrob.in/g4vj2s/

Phil Creed:

Arun H:
I don't think PI is the right tool for the alignment. The method I used for alignment was in PS where you load the files as layers and align them manually. You will find, as I noted above, that the apparent size of the Moon/Sun is larger for brighter images, I think due to saturation of regions of the near corona. You can live with this or resize those images using the Transform tool (center the Sun/Moon best you can against the darker images before resizing). Then vary the opacity of each layer till you get the result you want. The layers can then be combined and subsequent editing done either directly in PS or saved as TIFF and edited in PI or other software.  This is my result. I didn't bother to resize the images, just centered them:

https://astrob.in/g4vj2s/

Don't have PS.  Can this be done in GIMP?

Clear Skies,
Phil

I have never used GIMP, so no idea.

Phil Creed:
Are there any YouTube videos for how this is done?

Here is one. There are many others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pnV7VP6Oaw

I will echo others responses that FFTRegistration did not work well for me either, especially the frames close to totality.  I ended up going layer by layer in photoshop and using the difference blend mode to line up each frame along the limb of the sun.

Before you go to the effort of manually aligning each frame, I would recommend doing a batch linear fit.  I made the mistake of spending a few hours painfully lining up the frames only to realize the passing clouds had a pretty noticeable effect on exposure of random frames.

Phil Creed:

Arun H:

Phil Creed:

Arun H:
I don't think PI is the right tool for the alignment. The method I used for alignment was in PS where you load the files as layers and align them manually. You will find, as I noted above, that the apparent size of the Moon/Sun is larger for brighter images, I think due to saturation of regions of the near corona. You can live with this or resize those images using the Transform tool (center the Sun/Moon best you can against the darker images before resizing). Then vary the opacity of each layer till you get the result you want. The layers can then be combined and subsequent editing done either directly in PS or saved as TIFF and edited in PI or other software.  This is my result. I didn't bother to resize the images, just centered them:

https://astrob.in/g4vj2s/

Don't have PS.  Can this be done in GIMP?

Clear Skies,
Phil

I have never used GIMP, so no idea.

Dumb question, but how is the alignment process done in PS?  I'm assuming something similar in GIMP; just have zero experience using PS and am not a fan of paying indefinite subscriptions.

Are there any YouTube videos for how this is done?

Clear Skies,
Phil

You need to have all your images as layers in the same workspace and in the order of which you took them, the first one being at the back and the last one at the front.

Then you make all your layers invisible except for the first one....the one at the back.

After that, for each layer you do the following

- make it visible
- change its opacity so you can see the image below through it
- click and drag that layer to align the sun with the image behind it.
- set the layer opacity back to 100%
- make the layer invisible 

Once you've done that to all the layers you can export each one as a separate image. 

PS has 2 nice features.  When you crop it crops all the layers at once so it's quite easy to make them exactly the same size.  It also allows you to export all your layers at once.

That's how I did it in PS.  I don't know how/if the same can be done in Gimp