I'm attempting to align and blend frames for an HDR image of the eclipse in photoshop. The two issues I'm having are first, that the moon appears to be a slightly different shape and size in each exposure, which prevents photoshop from properly aligning them and when I try I can only get them close but not perfect, and when I do try and combine them the longest exposure blows out the other shorter exposures so I'm not getting any additional detail or dynamic range out of it. I'm currently following Sky at Nights Eclipse tutorial and its not working, and the few others I've come across don't address my issues or require software that I do not have, anyone know what I'm doing wrong or have a link to a tutorial that might help?
Eclipse alignment and blending
The best thing is to align the images by hand in PS. Yo can then use the lens correction to slightly expand the short exposure to match the size or use free transformation to match the size.
Then make sure the short exposure is on top of the long exposure. Create a layer mask next to the short exposure, select the long exposure, copy it to the layer mask and blur the mask for about 20 pix. You can also adjust the curves on the layer mask to your taste. Once this is done, marge the layers and this will be your new long exposure and you can continue with the next short exposure. You can also use the mask refine function to smooth your mask.
This process is similar to Orion nebula process where you take different exposure so the trapezium does not get blown.
You can see my picture of the eclipse for reference. It is composed by 7 exposures.
Hope this helps
Rodrigo
Then make sure the short exposure is on top of the long exposure. Create a layer mask next to the short exposure, select the long exposure, copy it to the layer mask and blur the mask for about 20 pix. You can also adjust the curves on the layer mask to your taste. Once this is done, marge the layers and this will be your new long exposure and you can continue with the next short exposure. You can also use the mask refine function to smooth your mask.
This process is similar to Orion nebula process where you take different exposure so the trapezium does not get blown.
You can see my picture of the eclipse for reference. It is composed by 7 exposures.
Hope this helps
Rodrigo
Helpful
Rodrigo Roesch:
The best thing is to align the images by hand in PS. Yo can then use the lens correction to slightly expand the short exposure to match the size or use free transformation to match the size.
Then make sure the short exposure is on top of the long exposure. Create a layer mask next to the short exposure, select the long exposure, copy it to the layer mask and blur the mask for about 20 pix. You can also adjust the curves on the layer mask to your taste. Once this is done, marge the layers and this will be your new long exposure and you can continue with the next short exposure. You can also use the mask refine function to smooth your mask.
This process is similar to Orion nebula process where you take different exposure so the trapezium does not get blown.
You can see my picture of the eclipse for reference. It is composed by 7 exposures.
Hope this helps
Rodrigo
ok thanks I'll give that a try
If you have PS extended edition you can add all the layers in one file, convert it to smart object and use PS stacker in mean mode. That also works fine, in my case my PS is not extended so I don’t have access to that function
I've got PS CC, not extended
Rodrigo Roesch:
The best thing is to align the images by hand in PS. Yo can then use the lens correction to slightly expand the short exposure to match the size or use free transformation to match the size.
Then make sure the short exposure is on top of the long exposure. Create a layer mask next to the short exposure, select the long exposure, copy it to the layer mask and blur the mask for about 20 pix. You can also adjust the curves on the layer mask to your taste. Once this is done, marge the layers and this will be your new long exposure and you can continue with the next short exposure. You can also use the mask refine function to smooth your mask.
This process is similar to Orion nebula process where you take different exposure so the trapezium does not get blown.
You can see my picture of the eclipse for reference. It is composed by 7 exposures.
Hope this helps
Rodrigo
Could you expand on the idea of using lens correction to match exposures? I haven't found relevant how to's in my searches and I feel like it might be a good candidate for my alignment issues.
When I stack images that were taken very close together (using layer difference in Photoshop), simply moving the images into alignment looks pretty good.
But when the images are at opposite ends of the sequence, taken minutes apart, things are off even after I overlap them as much as possible.
Are lens corrections a good candidate to help here or is it wrong to even try stacking untracked images taken far apart?
Well Written Engaging