Automated Stacking of Star Trails in PS CS5

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94 thoughts on “Automated Stacking of Star Trails in PS CS5”

  1. Pingback: Star Trail Creation – Step By Step | Star Circle Academy

  2. Really appreciate the time and effort you all have put into providing us amateur photo enthusiasts with instructions on how to produce star trail images. But I am having a problem: with the DO This First action I get a message that reads “could not complete the command because of a problem using the Adobe Color Engine.” I tried converting my NEF images to jpegs, changing my workspace color from Prophoto to Adobe 1998, and changing the color settings from Prophoto convert to North American General settings, but I keep getting the same error message. Any idea about what is happening and how can I fix this? Thanks.
    Drew

    • Drew, thanks for your praise. I don’t have an answer for you, but this might help. You don’t say what version of Photoshop you have, but similar problems were reported with CS2 and CS3 as well. More Google searching should help.

      • i too am getting the error that says the same thing ” could not complete the command because of a problem using the adobe color engine” i checked my preferences in photoshop and it is checked for RGB, i am using photoshop CS5 have you got a solution since Drew wrote in almost a year ago

        • Sorry Rose, but I don’t have a solution to this Adobe created conundrum. All the searching I’ve done on the topic has been fruitless. If you see the problem with “Do this First” but not with the stacking part itself, then you can skip the “do this first” by loading the first image manually. FWIW I too get the problem from time to time but NOT with this action, and not in a clearly identifiable scenario.

  3. Would like to give your action a go but I see no way of opening it on a Mac. I clicked on the link and it simply opened the action in a Safari window. Tried double clicking on the text, of course to no avail. Went to Photoshop CS5 and, as you said looked under the Window Tab and clicked actions. Apparently, my browser isn’t as user-friendly as your Windows machine. (Psst, don’t tell my wife. She said that I should get a Windows unit like hers. I said Macs are different honey, guess so). Anyway, that opened a list of 10 or so actions but none of them were listed as StarCircleAcademy Stack Action v.4. So, until I can get some enlightment as to how to install, I will be digging around and asking my more tech-savvy friends. Thanks for the action though, and I look forward to using it at some point in the not too distant future.

    • Well, I use a real computer so can’t help you with Mac issues. ;-) Seriously, though, I don’t use a Mac, but I have friends who do, I’ll ask one of them to give it a try and see what I come up with. Meanwhile if you find a solution, please let us know!

      Oh, so here is what you can do… right click this link and do save as. After it downloads you should be able to execute (double click) the saved file and have Photoshop load it.

    • There are a number of options with a Mac. You need to save the file under the link, not open it. One of these should work, depending on OS version and config of your browser.

      Option-Click may save it to your desktop or Downloads Folder.

      Or….Command-Click will give you a dialog box. Choose “Save Linked File to Desktop.”

      Or… Command-Click will give you a dialog box. Choose “Save Linked File As…” and choose the Desktop as the location.

      Once you have the .atn file saved, locate it, double click it, and Photoshop should open with the action in the correct location.

  4. The math on this makes perfect sense for stacked star trails except for one important thing – noise. This will seamlessly blend all your star trails together no problem, noise and all. In fact, it will give you the brightest instance of a stuck pixel throughout your entire image sequence. So, while you will get your hours-long trails, you will also get the maximum amount of noise possible. What do you do to counteract this? It’s pretty impossible to paint it out pixel by pixel when every 4th pixel has noise. I have a 5D2 which isn’t supposed to be that noisy of a camera, though a 6 minute exposure will make a profound level.

    • Kurt: The whole point of shooting shorter exposures is that there is a LOT less noise – give it a try and you’ll see that 10 1-minute shots will be less noisy than one 10-minute shot and fortunately since noise is random the location of the noisy pixels is not constant. You are correct that the brightest pixel of all of the shots may be noise, but with less noise to start with you’re already ahead. However there are two more tricks in the arsenal:

      Include some moonlight/twilight or average the brightest sky shots and then restack those with lighten mode. The slightly brighter from moonlight or twilight will overwhelm the usually less glaringly bright noise.

      For hot pixels – there is no solution short of recalibrating your camera (via manual cleaning) and/or cloning those stuck pixels out. If I get a great image with two dozen hot pixels I’m ecstatic. Not much work to clone out hot pixels – nothing harder or more sinister than cloning out dust.

      Oh, almost forgot to point out that I have articles on reducing noise and in selecting exposure settings for shooting stars.

      • Hmm. Well my first attempt at stacking was using 6-minute exposures at ISO 400, which on my 5D2 results in a completely unacceptable amount of noise it seems. I’ll have to figure out a better technique. Thanks for the info.

        • I’ve never gotten a bad result on my 5DII at so low an ISO (knock wood). The questions that come to my mind are: 1. What are you doing to your shots besides stacking them? [trying to lighten them before stacking will amplify noise] 2. What is the ambient air temperature (hot = more noise). 3. What (if any) noise processing are you doing before stacking? I took a look at your star trails on Flickr and it appears many were done with film (quite lovely). Your 5 minute self portrait looks fine, though, and that was a 5DII.

  5. I’m in the middle of processing 230 90sec shots, and I have a run of 6 or 7 shots where the cloud cover overhead came through lightening up a good part of the frame for those shots – should i do 2 seperate stacks and try to blend just the trails so I don’t blend in all this cloud “noise”? I have a fairly beefy setup and running them now through statistics w/ the maximum setting on CS5 is taking the better side of an hour…. wondering how to avoid blending in the light of the clouds….

    mike

    • Mike: I’m afraid I can’t help you there except to encourage you to try different methods. The brightness of the clouds, how much of the frame they cover, the length of the frames and the goal you’re trying to achieve will likely lead you to a solution or a compromise. Clouds that move often create “stuttering” which I find unattractive. On the other hand… why are you using statistics when you’ve got a lighter weight stacking action (or is the stacking action no faster?)

      Your scenario is why I sometimes shoot raw + small JPG. I then play with the smaller JPG files to decide if I want to tackle the larger images – and by what methods.

  6. I’ve noticed that you haven’t included any dark frame subtraction in this action. Isn’t this something that would improve the image quality by reducing the noise, especially at high ISOs? Or is there some reason not to go down that path?

    • Excellent question. The short answer is dark frame subtraction does not reduce what is usually the strongest component of noise: *random* noise. An average of many dark frames could be used to reduce the background glow and to eliminate “stuck” (hot) pixels – provided the hot pixels are also in the dark frame – my experience is that they seldom are. But the real answer is that actions are clumsy things in Photoshop and the pre-setup needed to identify dark frames would make the action very difficult to use. And finally, I’ve found that with my current gear it is more effective to do noise reduction before I create JPGs which I stack (e.g. using Digital Photo Professional) or by doing noise reduction on the resultant stack. Perhaps I’m lucky, but I’m finding I use my dark frames less and less because the images are pretty clean to start with.

  7. I was wondering if you guys can help me out with a problem. I have run the software succefully once but on my second try I keep getting an error saying “could not complete command because area is empty”. I was using CR2 files and I have also converted them to JPG and I still get the same responce. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    • Todd, please be more specific. Describe the steps you took and which action you were running when you see the problem.
      It would also be helpful to know which version of Photoshop you’re using and on which platform.

      • Ok, I will try to be as detaied as possible. First let me say I know the software works because I have had success with it on another set of files. My version of PS is CS5 version 12.0.4 X 32. I have all of the files I want to stack in one folder and the files are CR2. I follow all of your instructions to the letter but once I press OK (instruction 10) the message box (instruction 11) does not appear. What happens is it looks like the first fill is loaded and as it starts to run down the actions, do this first,Open, Set selection and so on it stops at Fill and a Photoshop message pops up over a totaly empty picture file that says ( could not complete the command because the selected area is empty). I click the “ok” button on the message and thats it, Im left with a blank picture file on my screen. I could take a snaggit picture of the screen but I wasn’t sure how to load it on here. I hope this helps. If not please let me know what other information you mat require

        • I think I am able to duplicate the problem. When I have CR2 files that are”SRAW2″ format files (Small RAW) it behaves the same way you describe. I think I know how to fix it, but the good news is that there is an easy work-around:

          Load the last image into Photoshop and then run the “Load and Stack in LIGHTEN Mode” without the “do this first”. This works for me with the SRAW2 format files (and any other, for that matter). You may get a warning which you can ignore.

          PS I have fixed this problem in the v.5 version of the stacking action.

          • Wow you are good. You were correct, I went back and looked and they were SRAW2 files. I have downloaded the new version and it is running as I write. Your help is greatly appreciated!!!!!!

  9. Hello there,

    I have 800 photos that i took a few night ago of the star and i was wondering if anyone knows how to make the star move in trails using photoshop cs5. I’m on a mac laptop. I used to know how to but i reckon i forgot. Please help.

    Ollie

  10. Hi Steven,

    This is really very very useful. Thanks a lot.
    Yest i took 20 pics to make a star trails. I made a mistake while capturing. i took sme 8 photos in Jpeg… n suddenly i realized tht .. so i changed it to raw… How can i merge both jpeg and raw in 1 pic.??

    Thanks in Advance
    Dhanraj.. :)

    • Dhanraj… this is very simple. Put all file types in the same directory. If they are all the same size, the Stacking Action will do the trick. Raw, JPG, TIFF, doesn’t matter. If they are NOT the same size you’re going to have to scale the JPGs properly. Good luck!

  12. It´s a really nice job, thanks for sharing. But I´m having problems creating intermediates because the action just create 2 images, the first one and the last one, but don´t create the intermadiates ones.
    Everything else is working perfectly, do you know what is going on?
    Thanks again!

    • To save intermediates, you also have to select the option to “Override Action ‘Save As’ Commands”, choose a folder where files will go and probably have to make sure the files being created have a serial number in them so they don’t keep saving one over another. I think by default the “Save Intermediates” action will try to save in folder C:\tmp\MP_Project_a\Intermediates.

  13. I have just installed V.5 in CS5 using Windows 7. The action installed OK but when I go to run the “Do this first” action I get the message “could not complete command because area is empty” . I have 11 files jpg all size 1812 x 1000. If I load one first, then run the Load and Stack action, it does work.

    Any advice?

    • Not sure. I’ll look into it when I get a skinny minute. Glad you found a good workaround, however.

      By the way, this sounds suspiciously like the “Small RAW” problem earlier. The problem was not because of the format, but because of the file size. Somewhere in the action it was selecting a pixel that doesn’t exist in smaller images. Please try upgrading to v.5 of the Stacking Action and see if that solves your problem.

  14. I love the action and am recommending it to others. One minor question, does it work with previous versions of Photoshop? I have friends that haven’t updated yet, and I want to make sure that it will work for them before I recommend it.

    Thanks

  15. Hey Steven, every time I try to get a star trail I keep getting results like those found here: . They all have very noticeable gaps in between the stars. Is there any way to fix this? By the way, I am using your automatic stacking tool in Photoshop, it works way better than any other software I have tried to use, thanks!

    A few other details:
    -Camera and other equipment:
    *Canon EOS 450D/Xsi (mid-2009 model)
    *Targus tripod
    *Canon intervalometer
    -Camera/intervalometer settings for all the photos:
    Camera=
    *BULB mode
    *f/5.3
    *WB==Daytime mode
    *ISO==100
    Intervalometer=
    *30 sec exposure
    *33 sec intervals

    • You didn’t specify one important detail: what is the focal length of your lens? If you’re using an intervalometer and you have your camera in BULB mode I recommend reducing your interval to 1 second and see if it works. If it skips frames, bump it up to 2 seconds. And if that skips frames, bump up to 3 seconds. However, if you’re using a medium or telephoto lens, then even those short gaps are going to be noticeable.

      You can also employ the method Andy gives to eliminate those gaps.

      PS I doubt Targus makes a tripod worth trusting a camera and long exposures to. Be sure if you use one you’ve got it well weighted down and tightened up.

      • Well if I reduce my intervals to 1 second, then how can I give time for the picture to come out? Whenever I take a 30 second exposure it takes about another 31-33 seconds before it’s saved on the memory card.

      • Another little tidbit. if the gaps are irregular, check and make sure your card reader downloaded all the files. My card reader is doing that to me and it is driving me bananas. Every time I do a star trail, 2 or 3 shots will be left on the card, and I have to figure out which ones they are.

  16. Just a quick note to thank you for an amazing ATN routine! Took my first ever star trail images at the Grand Canyon and between the Stacker Checklist and your Photoshop stacker action, everything went perfectly! I was even able to use the action from within Photoshop CS3, and it worked exactly the as in CS5. My workflow is to import the RAW images into Lightroom; select the set I want to stack and Export as PSD 8-bit into a new folder; process using the Star Circle Stacking Action in Photoshop. Thanks again!

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  18. Hi,
    Ive just tried to use this, and i automate the action, at the do this first action, the fill submenu a message comes up with ‘could not complete the command because the selected area is empty’
    as im a new user of photoshop i dont really understand much of it!!
    all help appreciated!

    • Hmmh. Hard to tell what is going wrong – I’d appreciate it if you’d send me the first image of your stack. However I’ve just released v.6 of the action which SHOULD solve what I *think* is the problem.

      If it doesn’t you can load the last photo in your stack and then proceed to stack without doing the “first” step. My guess is that the problem has something to do with your default settings or your image data. It’s also possible that you’re clicking somewhere or something during the processing. Scripts are highly dependent on not being interrupted.

  20. I followed your instructions but I only get a final picture thats about 2.5″ X 2.5″. And that is just a small piece of what the full picture should be. What am I doing wrong?

    • 2.5″ is rather meaningless. You could have a 2.5 inch image of 250 pixels on a side or 25,000 pixels on a side – just depends on what you’ve set the pixel density to. The starting size of the image is taken from the first image in the folder. So if it is 2.5 x 2.5 at 10 pixels per inch, it’s going to try to stack everything on to that starting dimension.

      HOWEVER, it looks like I introduced an error when I made the last update. Instead of creating the background image dimensions based on the first picture it finds, it apparently is doing so based on the test image I used.

      Now created a v.7 which should work OK for you. Sorry for the inconvenience.

    • I don’t have Elements. I also found this “Unlike Photoshop, actions in Photoshop Elements can only be used on a single file.” So it seems it would not be possible to make it work.

  23. Hey, will this action work if I open the action in Photoshop CS4 on a mac?
    I do have CS5 but I prefer CS4 myself… Thank you.

    • Drew. Probably will work (some have reported it worked with CS3). Give it a try and let me know. If it doesn’t work I’ll give you double your money back. :-) If it breaks in half you can keep both halves!

      • Hi Steven, thanks for the quick reply. How much $$ does the download and can I pay through PayPal? I’m very interested in trying the action in CS4 on Mac. Cheers

        • We’ve raised the price 3000 percent. The action is now priced $0.00. It’s always been free, but if you’d like to pay for it we won’t mind, we just won’t be offering you double your money back if not satisfied. ;-)

  24. thanks for this amazing action

    1. it worked the first time with RAW files – no need to convert it to JPG … huge time saver
    2. instruction must be good in this webpage – i followed & was able to pull it off the first time. never happen before with other web-posted-photoshop instructions so either i am getting smarter or your instruction is plain & simple. my money is on the later :)

    thanks for this great action

  25. Pingback: Painted Star Trails « Dream Lake Photography

  27. Pingback: Hot on the Star Trail

  28. I was getting the same error as others above:
    “could not complete the command because of a problem using the adobe color engine”

    I did a lot of testing with different color settings and file types, but nothing helped.

    I searched the web again and found the following which corrected the problem for me.

    http://forums.adobe.com/message/3434694#3434694

    I followed the last part on the page:
    “I had this problem with PSE8 and again with PSE9 on two computers. The quick solution was to change the color mode from RGB Color to Bitmap in the pop up New file window when opening the first New Blank file. After that, you can change it back to RGB Color and it works fine. I’m surprised this bug was not fixed in PSE8 much less carrying it to PSE9. Mac Pro and a Mac Book Pro running 10.6.6.”

    I changed the color mode from RGB to to Bitmap and I also created a new file preset (I wanted one) and when I ran the batch again no error.

    Hope this helps someone !

    Nick

    • I’ve seen bizarre errors out of Photoshop from time to time. While your comments apply to Photoshop Elements, they may also apply to earlier versions of Photoshop as well. One example of a bizarre message I got was “initializing type library” but I wasn’t using the type tool – there was none in the image(s) I was loading.

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  31. What could I do to convert or add a new part to this action where it does exactly the same thing (which by the way is AWESOME and just what I was looking for) and save each results file along the way as a different results file.

    This way I can animate those and have sort of an animated line drawn for each star as it travels. So instead of one really awesome picture I can also have an animated video of the trails.

    • Cameron: I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking. The latest Stacking Action has “stack in lighten and save intermediates”. Sounds like that’s what you want. If you’re asking how to write an action… well that’s a whole kettle of fish that is best discovered by searching and looking at examples. Please note, that it would be “bad form” to repurpose someone’s work and distribute it as your own. Oh, and good luck because while creating actions is relatively easy… making them work well across lots of machines and images is not so simple.

  32. Steven: this is totally what I was looking for. And naw I would never claim it as my own, just would have either suggested it once done or kept it for myself ;)

  33. Pingback: August 20, 2012 – Star Trail « Skyheartphotography One Picture a Day Project

  34. Pingback: Dark Frames And Your Night Photography | Star Circle Academy

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  36. Great information and very inspiring with the easy to follow steps. Got my first image together by carefully following everything and it seemed to work perfectly no probs. Thankfully no issues. All good!

  37. Pingback: More Star Stacking Tricks: Use the Bridge | Star Circle Academy

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  39. Pingback: Brian Speice Photography | Star Trails Photography - How To - Brian Speice Photography

  40. hi there
    i was searchign on the internet how to create those droplets kind of startrails …
    ive been shooting ST for like few months now n im still a newbie at this art but this thing fascinates me alooot
    well the link u shared for stacking
    http://blog.tinyenormous.com/2009/10/04/star-trail-stacking-in-photoshop/
    is not opening at my end …
    i ve tried other websites also but cant find any proper stacking procedure …
    it would be nice if u make a small tutorial or a video on vimeo
    ill be greatful
    thanks

  41. Hi Steven :)

    i recently downloaded the Star Circle Academy Stacker Advanced and i’m having trouble after step 15. rather than go into what is happening could i record a video and you could tell me where i’m going wrong?

    Thank you

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