I followed this process. Used Levenhuk telescope 1500mm,127mm,f11.8 to take Moon pictures with Canon EOS90D. Looking very nice after joining 50 pics together. Thanks for this video!
What a great video, thanks! I will be trying this on the images I took of the Moon last night. I really enjoyed your calm instruction and loved the music selection! 😊
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto I actually did a lot better after watching your video! Far from perfect but I was resting my lens on a window ledge so not the best!
Great video, Chris. Really easy to follow and great results. Top tip - if you want to get the moon central in the frame, in PhotoShop draw a circle the same size as it on a layer above - drop the transparency so that you can line it up - and then use that circle to frame the image. Once you're happy, hide the circle layer and your moon should be exactly where you want it.
First...THANKS!!! I agree with another post that it was at a good pace and having never used PS it was easy to follow. I was watching a couple other videos on stacking and in one they mentioned a way to reduce the file size.
Took some last night and followed the process along while watching your video. Made it very easy thanks. Only thing was I didn't manage at first to find which file was the stacked one in LrC when it saved but then realised it was a Tif file. Thanks for sharing, very easy to do again now :)
Thanks for this tutorial, it's just what i've been looking for a method for stacking lunar images without having to download extra software. I got a great picture from 10 that I took last week. Now I have to set aside some time to stack the 80 that I took on Sunday night.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto Thx so much for this video, I'm now stacking 350 images of the Moon! My laptop is crying but I bet the result will be amazing. Is incredible what it is possible to do with a 10y old camera and an entry level zoom lens!
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto i love the final result, your tutorial was really helpful, also the part about bringin up the details was essential for me since the lense I have loses quite a bit of sharpnes at 200mm+ focal length.
Hey Chris, all your photos was taking with the same parameters o different parameters?, I like your method, i think so is more easy, because I do some similar, I do a compilation of 3 pictures bracketing style, ISO and Aperture same I just change the velocity of shooting, by to get a picture sub, over exposure and a normal picture, and I make merge in LR and process too...
Thanks for the comment. Yeah all of the images have the same capture settings. The moon doesn’t really have a lot of dynamic range to really need a HDR merge doing.
Hi Chris, Photoshop won't align my photos. I have a series during the recent lunar eclipse, so the moon isn't super bright however there is a portion of the moon still in light. The error message is that PS expects at least 40% overlap and it can't find it.
I’ve had this before - counter intuitive but if you crop out a little bit more and leave more black around the moon it should help PS work out which bit to align.
quick question ..try to stack a few images of moon I took ..was trying to stack them in PS..but it keeps telling me that the photos have to overlap by at least 40%....i cropped it and moon's position is roughly similar in all photos...What could be going on ?...only thing I can think of some wisps of clouds were passing through..?
Dont know if anyone gives a shit but if you're stoned like me during the covid times you can stream all of the new movies on InstaFlixxer. Have been binge watching with my girlfriend for the last couple of months xD
I have an old 1000mm lens and was wondering if you had any tips for possibly pre-processing the images for sharpness before stacking etc. Great tutorial!
What’s the lens? I would suggest going into Lightroom and using the sharpening mask. Goto sharpen, hold shift and slide the masking slider until just the outlines of craters are in white. Use a low-ish strength of say 15/20
QQ.. Why not also do an Auto Blend to address any focus issues? Would that not help in this scenario or did you feel all three images were properly focused? I have seen other videos of focus stacking and thought this may be a scenario that process could help as well. Also, fantastic video. It helped me take some great pictures of the moon recently.
Thanks for the comment. I see your point but focus stacking only really applies Jen you’re shouting a very narrow depth of field. Such as macro subjects at F1.8. The stacking then increases the depth of field - the area of focus. The moon is so far away that focus stacking wouldn’t really change anything.
Amazing tutorial that was simple and easy to follow - exactly what tutorials should be. I use it exclusively to edit my moon shots for eclipses, specifically. For those getting the 40% error, I just skip this step in images where the error message occurs. If you can't align the layers because of that error, you cannot stack them. Just skip those steps and follow the rest of the tutorial.
Really well explained! Even I understood what to do, unfortunately when I hit the auto align photoshop goes on a mad one and none of them line up! Any ideas?
is it like u shot all those moon images in constant aperture ss and all? or bracketed images all the time? if u could answer quick would be helpful cz tdy is another full moon
Hi Chris, I'm really happy with this video because its exactly want I want to do (found it through Googling "moon photography fotoshop stacking"), however... I have a decent set of moon photos that I want to stack but after 1:1 cropping it gave a really distorted stack with the moon not aligned and for the second try without cropping it gives the 40% warning. Do you have a suggestion what to do?
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto Wow, thanks for the quick reply! The problem is that the uncropped set gave the 40% error when trying to stack. From there I cannot uncrop. The moon doesn't shift that much and used 850mm lens effectively (600 + x1.4 extenfder) so still quiet alot of black
@@belissen You’ve got me stumped here. I’ll try get back to you when I’ve had a think. Only thing I can think off from the top of my head is manually uncrop. Add all your photos onto a larger black background and export them and try again.
Hi Jose. Median stacking takes the average for each pixel and assigns that value so it’s possible your photos are a little dark to begin with. What settings did you use to capture? I have a video on photographing the moon on my channel if it helps.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto Hi Chris, thanks for your response. I just used your video on how take pictures of the moon and applied it to my pictures, and they came out great. I took 171 good photos. However, now when I try to auto align them, my photshop seems to freeze in the auto aligning process about a quarter of the way in. Don't know why this is happening now.
Did you get them to align? It can take some time for it to work especially given the number of layers it’s trying to align. 171 will give you nice results though. But the alignment does take time and it will appear to freeze.
Hey, nice tutorial... When i try to auto align layers in photoshop it always says the images need to overlap by 40% or more which to me they obviously are... The problem is that to photoshop there is around 60-70% or blackness with lots of noise which is different in each picture and it therefor cant align them... Only If i crop the images down untill one can basically only see the moon does it actually align the layers. In your photos you have quite a lot of blackness though and it still works... Any idea why that is?
I’ve ran into this a few times myself and the only way around it that I’ve found is to do what you said above and just crop tighter to the moon. If you want black sky around then you can always “fake it” by aligning them, stacking them, and then increasing the canvas size from the Image tab at the top and then adding a black layer below the moon. Hope this helps.
Your tutorial is great but I ran into a problem right off the bat. That little "sync" button isn't there. Do you know why that may be? I've tried searching Help but it's of no... help.
Chris Baitson Photography I think I figured out what is going on here. I believe there was a brand new update recently so some of the controls aren’t in the same place and some of the methods you’re using have been turned into working functions of the update with different names. I’m brand new to the Adobe world so I don’t know the older versions at all. Lightroom has a “merge” function written right into the program now which does the layered stacking you show in your video with a couple clicks. Before it even does this it scans the images and tells you if there are enough similarities between photos to continue or not so you don’t get half way through a lengthy process only to find out it won’t work.
Thanks for this Chris a really helpful tutorial which I was able to easily follow through! I tried this with 650 layers...boy did that take a long time :) Sub +1
Glad you found it helpful. Yeah it can take some time with a lot of images but it really makes that final image look a lot more polished. I’d love to see the final image when it’s done.
How did you manage to stack that many photos without having any type of motion blur? I stacked around 10 (bearing in mind they were all perfectly aligned) and yet they were blurry and didn't stack smoothly @@PropPlanePat
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto it’s said something black can’t be more than 40 percent or something. I don’t know maybe my photo is a bit soft and photoshop can’t find and align the images.
Hi Chris. Great tutorials! I've been following you on Insta and just clicked the link in your bio and discovered your guides. Can I ask....what was the purpose of the stacking? Thanks....Don (@eat_my_pixels)
Glad you found the info! The stacking helps reduce noise for the most part. It also brings some ore of the details out on the moon but the main reason for it is noise reduction.
I couldn't make head nor tail of your video. I'm using Photoshop CS5.1 so it's a bit different. I notice in your video there is no button which actually says - STACK. Auto-align layers is greyed out when I try to align so I can't do it. I am so disappointed - Photoshop is so nerdy - It looks like you have to play around for hours just to stack a few pictures. It's a load of rubbish. OK - by manually cropping and aligning 4 pictures I got Photoshop to stack but the result was more blurry than any single photo. I tried Registax but it came out with a silly answer of blocks of the picture spread all over the image. Doesn't matter.
Thanks!
Thanks man!
Four years later, and this is still the best tutorial compared to others I've watched! Great job!
I followed this process. Used Levenhuk telescope 1500mm,127mm,f11.8 to take Moon pictures with Canon EOS90D. Looking very nice after joining 50 pics together. Thanks for this video!
No problem. Glad it helped. Would love to see the finished image.
Perfect example of how a tutorial should be done! made it easy for even a dumb ass like me to follow and get right first time . Thanks 😊
This was really helpful! Very concise and easy to follow, my image looks great at the end too
Glad the video helped you out 🤘🏻
Three years later and this is still an amazing tutorial. Thank you!
Thank you.
New to moon photography. This was the best tutorial I’ve seen! Thank you so much.
Thank you I’m glad it helped you!!!
Excellent tutorial. Many thanks
This is amazing! Thanks for showing me! I’ve always wondered lol
What a great video, thanks! I will be trying this on the images I took of the Moon last night. I really enjoyed your calm instruction and loved the music selection! 😊
Perfect time to watch this, full moon tomorrow night and hoping to shoot something I’ve not shot before!
How did you get on with shooting the moon?
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto I actually did a lot better after watching your video! Far from perfect but I was resting my lens on a window ledge so not the best!
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto but yeah a much better attempt after watching this tutorial! 💪🏻
Thank you, this was really helpful, I just started using light-room and sometimes can be overwhelming, and videos like yours really help me a lot.
It can be a little intimidating at first but you’ll soon get the hang of it!
I got the nice process from your advice...Thank you very much
Nice one, I did my 1st Moon shoot last night and this video will help.
Oh nice one. Hope the video helps!
Great video and Tutorial.Thankyou.
I could watch this all day bro so relaxing 😅
Great video, Chris. Really easy to follow and great results.
Top tip - if you want to get the moon central in the frame, in PhotoShop draw a circle the same size as it on a layer above - drop the transparency so that you can line it up - and then use that circle to frame the image. Once you're happy, hide the circle layer and your moon should be exactly where you want it.
Great tip! I’m going to try that next time I do this.
Quality tutorial there mate. Thank you
I am trying to figure out if there is a benefit to using PIPP and Registax over just photoshop alone. This picture looks so beautiful!
I’ve not used either to comment as I find Photoshop works just fine for this.
Great tutorial thanks
Great video! Thanks for this Chris, I just made my first stacked moon image, made up with it!
Great tutorial, at a nice steady pace, easy to follow and I have now subscribed. Look forward to seeing more of your tutorials.
Thank you for the feedback Sarah. This was one of my first videos. Hope it helped you out 🤘🏻
Thanks Chris. Really helpful video. Now better photo shot in Normandy yesterday night.
No problem Nico. Glad you found the video helpful 🤘🏻
First...THANKS!!! I agree with another post that it was at a good pace and having never used PS it was easy to follow. I was watching a couple other videos on stacking and in one they mentioned a way to reduce the file size.
Took some last night and followed the process along while watching your video. Made it very easy thanks. Only thing was I didn't manage at first to find which file was the stacked one in LrC when it saved but then realised it was a Tif file. Thanks for sharing, very easy to do again now :)
Thanks for watching and glad you found the video helpful.
Great tutorial ! Please explain how stacking more photos like 50 will help compared to 10.
If you stack more photos you will have less noise and more detail. More photos is better in this case.
Thanks for this tutorial, it's just what i've been looking for a method for stacking lunar images without having to download extra software. I got a great picture from 10 that I took last week. Now I have to set aside some time to stack the 80 that I took on Sunday night.
Glad you found the video helpful Mark. Sometimes things get over complicated when you can use what you already have.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto Thx so much for this video, I'm now stacking 350 images of the Moon! My laptop is crying but I bet the result will be amazing. Is incredible what it is possible to do with a 10y old camera and an entry level zoom lens!
Yeah my MacBook hates me when I do things like this. The moon is so easy to shoot and edit though. Glad you found it helpful. Hope the result is nice.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto i love the final result, your tutorial was really helpful, also the part about bringin up the details was essential for me since the lense I have loses quite a bit of sharpnes at 200mm+ focal length.
@@mastroitek This can be true of a lot of lenses. Even my 70-200 L lens seems a little softer at the long end. Glad it helped though.
Thanks
Very good. Will try this sir
Great and easy to follow tutorial!! a rare find
Thanks Sarah.
You're amazing bruv!
Super! Thank you very much!
Great video. Thanks!
Good tutorial. Easy to follow and with a successful outcome. Cheers mate.
Glad it helped you out. I might head out and grab one of the moon now. Not a lot else we can do at the moment.
Awesome video...thank you!
Very good video. Good to hear a fellow northerner.
Hi, thank you for this, I learned something new from you today. Cheers mate.🍻
Glad you found it helpful! Hope your final image looks great 😊
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto Tnx, it looks good, but not even close to your result. Gotta shoot more photo now. 🍻
Hey Chris, all your photos was taking with the same parameters o different parameters?, I like your method, i think so is more easy, because I do some similar, I do a compilation of 3 pictures bracketing style, ISO and Aperture same I just change the velocity of shooting, by to get a picture sub, over exposure and a normal picture, and I make merge in LR and process too...
Thanks for the comment. Yeah all of the images have the same capture settings. The moon doesn’t really have a lot of dynamic range to really need a HDR merge doing.
Thanks bro, I did it like you did it, nothing bad... Was a great picture
Hi Chris, Photoshop won't align my photos. I have a series during the recent lunar eclipse, so the moon isn't super bright however there is a portion of the moon still in light. The error message is that PS expects at least 40% overlap and it can't find it.
I’ve had this before - counter intuitive but if you crop out a little bit more and leave more black around the moon it should help PS work out which bit to align.
quick question ..try to stack a few images of moon I took ..was trying to stack them in PS..but it keeps telling me that the photos have to overlap by at least 40%....i cropped it and moon's position is roughly similar in all photos...What could be going on ?...only thing I can think of some wisps of clouds were passing through..?
Try cropping out a bit. More black and smaller moon then crop back in once photoshop has stacked them. Usually solves that one for me.
Don’t forget to subscribe to see more from me!
Let me know down below what you think? Did the video help you?
after your tutorial im finally able to stack my mindblowing 18 shots of the waning crescent :D thx!
Glad I was able to help! 18 shots is more than I’ve managed to take in a while so well done! I’d love to see the end result!
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto too cloudy? :(
Well, i think im gonna post it on my instagram, ill send you a request if you want
Dont know if anyone gives a shit but if you're stoned like me during the covid times you can stream all of the new movies on InstaFlixxer. Have been binge watching with my girlfriend for the last couple of months xD
@Zyaire Lian yup, I've been using instaflixxer for since december myself =)
I have an old 1000mm lens and was wondering if you had any tips for possibly pre-processing the images for sharpness before stacking etc.
Great tutorial!
What’s the lens? I would suggest going into Lightroom and using the sharpening mask. Goto sharpen, hold shift and slide the masking slider until just the outlines of craters are in white. Use a low-ish strength of say 15/20
So helpful!!!❤
Thank you Robin!
Thank you so much!
You’re welcome. Hope it helped.
QQ.. Why not also do an Auto Blend to address any focus issues? Would that not help in this scenario or did you feel all three images were properly focused? I have seen other videos of focus stacking and thought this may be a scenario that process could help as well.
Also, fantastic video. It helped me take some great pictures of the moon recently.
Thanks for the comment. I see your point but focus stacking only really applies Jen you’re shouting a very narrow depth of field. Such as macro subjects at F1.8. The stacking then increases the depth of field - the area of focus. The moon is so far away that focus stacking wouldn’t really change anything.
Amazing tutorial that was simple and easy to follow - exactly what tutorials should be. I use it exclusively to edit my moon shots for eclipses, specifically.
For those getting the 40% error, I just skip this step in images where the error message occurs. If you can't align the layers because of that error, you cannot stack them. Just skip those steps and follow the rest of the tutorial.
Really well explained! Even I understood what to do, unfortunately when I hit the auto align photoshop goes on a mad one and none of them line up! Any ideas?
Does it give an error message complaining that the layers don’t overlap enough?
Nope, it tries to do it but skew lots of them and changes the angle on others! Might be the quality of image? (Although I thought they were good!)
is it like u shot all those moon images in constant aperture ss and all? or bracketed images all the time?
if u could answer quick would be helpful cz tdy is another full moon
They’re all the same settings. No need to bracket the moon.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto a tons of thank you t you for telling me that tip
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto btw if it is same settimgs how does it actually help in stacking?
Hi Chris, I'm really happy with this video because its exactly want I want to do (found it through Googling "moon photography fotoshop stacking"), however... I have a decent set of moon photos that I want to stack but after 1:1 cropping it gave a really distorted stack with the moon not aligned and for the second try without cropping it gives the 40% warning. Do you have a suggestion what to do?
Try less of a crop to begin with and see if it will align better.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto Wow, thanks for the quick reply! The problem is that the uncropped set gave the 40% error when trying to stack. From there I cannot uncrop. The moon doesn't shift that much and used 850mm lens effectively (600 + x1.4 extenfder) so still quiet alot of black
@@belissen You’ve got me stumped here. I’ll try get back to you when I’ve had a think. Only thing I can think off from the top of my head is manually uncrop. Add all your photos onto a larger black background and export them and try again.
thanks a lot great video!!!!
What do you accomplish by stacking pics that you couldn't have done using a single image?
Reduce noise. Increase detail.
Can you stack pictures of the moon with different settings?
Yeah you can do that I just prefer to keep the settings the same but there’s no reason it wouldn’t work.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto I had to change settings a bit for the blood moon
Hi Chris, great tutorial. When I stack to median, my moon disappears as if it is too dark. Why is this?
Hi Jose. Median stacking takes the average for each pixel and assigns that value so it’s possible your photos are a little dark to begin with. What settings did you use to capture? I have a video on photographing the moon on my channel if it helps.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto Hi Chris, thanks for your response. I just used your video on how take pictures of the moon and applied it to my pictures, and they came out great. I took 171 good photos. However, now when I try to auto align them, my photshop seems to freeze in the auto aligning process about a quarter of the way in. Don't know why this is happening now.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto are 171 photos too much?
Did you get them to align? It can take some
time for it to work especially given the number of layers it’s trying to align. 171 will give you nice results though. But the alignment does take time and it will appear to freeze.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto Hi Chris, you are right. It took a while but it finished aligning. Thank you for the help, I have subscribed!
Whats better at this Registax or Photoshop ?
I can’t speak for Registax I’ve never used it.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto no worries. Is like 100 images about the best for best results?
100 will give you nice results just watch the alignment with them.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto might try 100 next half and 3/4 moon
Hey, nice tutorial... When i try to auto align layers in photoshop it always says the images need to overlap by 40% or more which to me they obviously are... The problem is that to photoshop there is around 60-70% or blackness with lots of noise which is different in each picture and it therefor cant align them... Only If i crop the images down untill one can basically only see the moon does it actually align the layers. In your photos you have quite a lot of blackness though and it still works... Any idea why that is?
I’ve ran into this a few times myself and the only way around it that I’ve found is to do what you said above and just crop tighter to the moon. If you want black sky around then you can always “fake it” by aligning them, stacking them, and then increasing the canvas size from the Image tab at the top and then adding a black layer below the moon. Hope this helps.
When I select all of the pictures in Lightroom and right click it does not give me the option to edit in photoshop or open as layers.
Your tutorial is great but I ran into a problem right off the bat. That little "sync" button isn't there. Do you know why that may be? I've tried searching Help but it's of no... help.
Shoot me a DM on Instagram and I’ll try and help you figure out.
Chris Baitson Photography I think I figured out what is going on here. I believe there was a brand new update recently so some of the controls aren’t in the same place and some of the methods you’re using have been turned into working functions of the update with different names. I’m brand new to the Adobe world so I don’t know the older versions at all. Lightroom has a “merge” function written right into the program now which does the layered stacking you show in your video with a couple clicks. Before it even does this it scans the images and tells you if there are enough similarities between photos to continue or not so you don’t get half way through a lengthy process only to find out it won’t work.
Thanks for this Chris a really helpful tutorial which I was able to easily follow through! I tried this with 650 layers...boy did that take a long time :) Sub +1
Glad you found it helpful. Yeah it can take some time with a lot of images but it really makes that final image look a lot more polished. I’d love to see the final image when it’s done.
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto Cheers Chris, I pinged you on Insta :)
What’s your Instagram handle. It popped up on my phone but can’t find it on Instagram. 🤷🏻♂️
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto pat_tickner_photography
How did you manage to stack that many photos without having any type of motion blur? I stacked around 10 (bearing in mind they were all perfectly aligned) and yet they were blurry and didn't stack smoothly @@PropPlanePat
I can’t find the sync button! Only got seconds in and can’t go any further. Does anyone know where this has moved to?
What was you camera lens/setting for this shot?
I used a Canon 200D and a cheap 75-300mm. If you’d like to see the settings there’s a video on my channel about it.
Very helpful and very clear tutorial. Thank You and of course subscribe :)
What is the music called???
my open as layers in photoshop is grayed out
I followed your steps but it wouldn’t let me stack
Can you remember the error it gave?
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto it’s said something black can’t be more than 40 percent or something. I don’t know maybe my photo is a bit soft and photoshop can’t find and align the images.
@@flameout12345 Have that too now. Did you manage to solve it?
Hi Chris. Great tutorials! I've been following you on Insta and just clicked the link in your bio and discovered your guides. Can I ask....what was the purpose of the stacking? Thanks....Don (@eat_my_pixels)
Ignore my question....I just clicked on "show more" and saw the reason....Doh!
Glad you found the info! The stacking helps reduce noise for the most part. It also brings some ore of the details out on the moon but the main reason for it is noise reduction.
I couldn't make head nor tail of your video.
I'm using Photoshop CS5.1 so it's a bit different.
I notice in your video there is no button which actually says - STACK.
Auto-align layers is greyed out when I try to align so I can't do it.
I am so disappointed - Photoshop is so nerdy -
It looks like you have to play around for hours just to stack a few pictures.
It's a load of rubbish.
OK - by manually cropping and aligning 4 pictures I got Photoshop to
stack but the result was more blurry than any single photo.
I tried Registax but it came out with a silly answer of blocks of the picture
spread all over the image.
Doesn't matter.
I think its PhoToshop not PhoHoshop hahaha
Are you sure?
@@ChrisBaitsonPhoto hahaha yeah ❤️❤️❤️
How much nasa payin u Fr 😂
I’m from the UK it would be the ESA and I can tell you…. Not enough.