Milky Way Exposure Stacking with Manual Alignment in Adobe Photoshop

In this video tutorial I walk through a technique for reducing noise and improving image quality by combining multiple astrophotography exposures. I also demonstrate what to do when auto-alignment tools, like Photoshop’s Auto-Align Layers function, fail to properly align your images.

Introduction

Lately, I’ve been on an exposure stacking kick. Combining a bunch of consecutive exposures of the night sky can greatly improve image quality and it has allowed me to use smaller, cheaper and more compact gear (like a point and shoot or even a smartphone) without making too many compromises in image quality. Stacking is a technique that’s been used by astronomers and astrophotographers for decades. Most of the telescope photographs that you see from observatories like the Hubble Space Telescope were made by combining hundreds of separate photographs with hours and hours of data to yield such beautiful images of the night sky.

Hubble Deep Field Image Unveils Myriad Galaxies Back to the Beginning of Time
This Hubble Deep Field Image was made from a stack of 276 frames. Credit: Robert Williams and the Hubble Deep Field Team (STScI) and NASA via HubbleSite

In the video tutorial below, I walk through the techniques that I use to combine several exposures of the Milky Way using Adobe Photoshop. The resulting photograph from combining just 8 separate exposures offers a great improvement in the quality of the image by reducing noise and revealing more detail.

If you’re drooling over the latest, expensive camera body and lens offerings in hopes to improve your landscape astrophotography, consider using image stacking instead of spending a boatload of money on new equipment. You’ll find that with some careful use of stacking, even a basic DSLR with manual controls can make some very high quality images of the night sky.

What to Expect (Before and After)

Sony RX100III, 8.8mm, f/2.8, ISO 1600, 8 x 20 seconds

In the video tutorial below, I use some relatively noisy sample images made with the Sony RX100III (read our full astrophotography review). You can see the before and after example image above. This particular tutorial focuses on the use of the Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop and addresses one of the common problems that many of our readers have experienced when following my original video tutorial on Landscape Astrophotography Image Stacking when using these pieces of software.

Stacking un-tracked exposures of the night sky requires alignment of each exposure to compensate for the rotation of the Earth. Photoshop has an auto-alignment tool that can line-up multiple exposure layers but sometimes the tool will fail to properly align the images, resulting in a low-quality final image with blurry stars. There are a lot of reasons that Photoshop might fail to align your layers: clouds, lens distortion, and even light pollution can prevent automatic alignment.

This video walks through the method that I use to align my exposures after some basic edits and I also cover what to do when the auto-align layers feature in photoshop fails to work properly. Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.

Photoshop Exposure Stacking Video Tutorial

Alternative Layer Auto Alignment and Star Stacking Software

Adobe Photoshop is typically my primary go-to piece of software for stacking landscape astrophotos but I should also mention some of the other options that you may want to try that may produce good results. Even if it is my personal choice, Photoshop can be a beast of a program and it’s not purpose built for astrophotography. Most of the below pieces of software are made for photographs of deep sky objects but they can often also be used to make stacks of wide angle landscape astrophotos too.

I’ve had varying results on each of these pieces of software. Sometimes they work perfectly and other times they too will have problems with alignment but they’re worth a shot if you’re looking for other automatic options. If you know of any other software tools that you think other photographers will like to try, let me know and I’ll add them to this list.

Starry Landscape Stacker

Starry Landscape Stacker is probably the most intriguing of all the software packages that I’ve used. It’s only available for MacOSX but it automatically stacks and masks landscape astrophotography, perfect for the stuff that we love to make at Lonely Speck. I’ve had generally good success with small stacks (8-12 exposure max) but it starts to produce mixed results if too many exposures are used. I’m still putting the software through the paces but I plan to make a quick video walkthrough of Starry Landscape Stacker in the near future. If you’re on MacOSX, this is a great App to try.

DeepSkyStacker (DSS) (Free)

DSS is probably the most well-known astrophotography stacking program. A lot of Lonely Speck readers have shown me their excellent results from the use of DSS. It’s completely free and available for use on Windows.

Nebulosity

Nebulosity is an image stacking program that’s available for both Mac OSX and Windows. I’ve had the most success with Nebulosity when using longer lenses (50mm and longer) and mixed results with untracked stacks using ultra wide angle lenses. You can download and try it in demo mode to see if it works well for you.

More Before/After

In order to give you a better idea of the results that we can expect from image stacking, check out these before/after examples of image stacks made with the technique outlined in this tutorial.

Sony RX100III, 25.7mm, f/2.8, ISO 1600, 8 x 10 seconds

Sony a7II, 55mm, f/2.5, ISO 1600, 32 x 5 seconds

 

Sony RX100III, 8.8mm, f/2, ISO 1600, 54 x 20 seconds

Sony a7II, 50mm, f/2.8, ISO 6400, 16 x 6 seconds

Conclusion

Try out exposure stacking! While you’re out shooting the Milky Way, take a few extra exposures and try combining them in post processing. Even just a few exposures combined in post processing can make a huge difference in final image quality. Stacking can greatly improve the results you can get from very limited equipment. I have made it a normal practice in almost all of my astrophotos and I’ve seen a great boost in image quality as a result.

I hope this tutorial was helpful, let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below.

Equipment

Disclosure

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. We are also a participant in the B&H Affiliate Program which also allows us to earn fees by linking to bhphotovideo.com.

Learn Astrophotography

Astrophotography 101 is completely free for everyone. All of the lessons are available on the Lonely Speck Astrophotography 101 page for you to access at any time. Enter your email and whenever we post a new lesson you’ll receive it in your inbox. We won’t spam you and your email will stay secure. Furthermore, updates will be sent out only periodically, usually less than once per week.

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Believe it or not, Lonely Speck is my full-time job. It’s been an amazing experience for us to see a community develop around learning astrophotography and we’re so happy to be a small part of it. I have learned that amazing things happen when you ask for help so remember that we are always here for you. If you have any questions about photography or just want to share a story, contact us! If you find the articles here helpful, consider helping us out with a donation.

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Thanks so much for being a part of our astrophotography adventure.

-Ian

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50 Replies to “Milky Way Exposure Stacking with Manual Alignment in Adobe Photoshop”

  1. I watch and try many of you tutorials and find them helpful, except the one before this one where you use the median stacking method, I set the foreground smart object and then move on to the sky smart object but once I go to smart object then median filter it goes through the process but then kicks out the smart object and tells me that it needs to be rasterized … Why?

    Anyway love your site and learn a lot
    Lynn

    1. Lynn, are you making sure that you’re not putting smart objects into smart objects? It’s hard to fully understand what might be going on but I would check that first.

  2. Thanks for the tutorial Ian! I’m excited to try this out.

    One question though, do you think this technique can be combined with your stitching tutorial to make medium format looking photos? Or would the stars shift too much in the time needed to take 8 photos for each area of the sky to stitch together?

    1. It can for sure but careful and consistent shooting would be required to keep up with time. Ample overlap would help a lot. I think practicing with a small pano, maybe not more than 4 frames, would help prove it out. I may try this myself. One last trick might be to use one wider angle shot as a sort of manual index to assist with stitching…

  3. Ian–thanks for the superb and crystal clear tutorial! By the way, have you tried this method with Rokinon 14mm f2.8 files? If so what were the results? Did you apply a lens correction to the Rokinon prior to processing the files? I ask, given the mustache distortion of the lens.

    Again, thank you and I am looking forward to your response!

    1. I would advise using lens correction on the 14mm prior to stacking to help with alignment. But yes, I have used this method on the 14mm Rokinon and the 15mm Voightlander with success!

  4. Ian–Once again, a very helpful tutorial. Two questions: (1) Is exposure stacking necessary if one is shooting with a Sony A7s and (2) Can exposure stacking be used to deal with a situation where you have a brightly lit foreground and a dark background (in other words, separately expose for the foreground and separately expose for the background)? Thanks.

    1. Hey there Hadley!
      Exposure stacking is never really necessary but it will always provide some improvement. Now the a7S already produces generally “excellent” low noise shots so you would probably only see an improvement from “excellent” to ” excellent-er” which might be less tangible than with a crappier setup (like a small 1″ sensor) which can being you from “okay” to “excellent.” I hope that makes sense. Regardless of gear choice now, I always shoot a stack of minimum 8 frames, even with the a7S, on compositions that I particularly like. I don’t do it for everything but on those ‘wow’ shots, I take a few more frames.

      Yes! Stacking can greatly help with bringing out foreground detail. Just keep in mind that you’ll only want to stack like exposures. You can’t combine a brighter exposure into a stack with a darker exposure as the darker exposures will compromise the brighter ones. Do one stack for the stars and one for the foreground, just like in the tut, and then composite them together after.

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