As The Stars Come Out

Alpha_Plus · April 11, 2010

I took this tonight, out shooting the sunset. Two photos 50 minutes apart. Very minimal processing.

Comments welcome.

18mm | 2s | f/13 | ISO 100 & 18mm | 30s | f/3.5 | ISO 1600

astrostu · April 11, 2010

That's a VERY cool effect - I've actually been trying to do something similar but without much luck. How did you blend the two together? I've tried lots of things but never figured out something that works.

My critique is that it looks somewhat noisy, likely due to the ISO 1600. Looks like you're also getting some amp(?)/heat(?) noise in the magenta in the upper corners. Again, probably due to the ISO 1600. I'm not sure you can easily get rid of the magenta. For the noise, I'm sure folks have some noise software you could use. If nothing else, a very small Gaussian blur will help a little (like 0.5-1.5 px).

I see you used an 18mm lens so I can't say to try to use something wider, but another option at least for the magenta is to frame your shot specifically keeping in mind that you're going to crop the outer ~20% off so that when you do, you still have a composition you like and don't have the magenta in the corners.

Alpha_Plus · April 11, 2010

Thanks for your comment astrostu, I had never seen the magenta before and was worried something was had gone wrong with my lens.

This process is fairly simple in photoshop. As I mentioned, the two shots are 50 minutes apart so the first sunset shot goes on the base layer and your star shot goes on top. I changed the blending mode to 'lighten' which allows the stars to shine through as such. I also deleted everything below the mountains as there are normally plenty of lights across the lake after sunset.

I've reprocessed and have come out with what I think is a much better result. I added a curves adjustment to the stars layer to get rid of most of the noise and also cropped out the heat noise in the top corners. I know I should have left a little more room on the left for the tree but can't be bothered going back to the cropping step.

What do you think??

astrostu · April 11, 2010

Okay, now I'm not sure why I didn't find the Lighten blending mode when I tried this before. Oh well, there's always next time.

I think your second one is better in terms of removing artifacts, but I don't like how bright the stars look this time. I liked in the first how they were more subtle. As in, it almost looked like it could be real. This time, not so much. I was just messing around with some older photos of mine - a sunset and a starfield - and when I set the blending mode to Lighten I also decreased the opacity to around 50%. I think you can go for subtlety here without losing the effect.

It may just be me, but there's also the issue of the stars appearing to be the same brightness whether they're "behind" a cloud or not. Don't get me wrong - I like the clouds in this case and think they add, but I think to maybe make this more "convincing" you could do a very rough outline around the clouds and then lower the brightness of the stars in that region. Especially the ones on the right-hand side.

Alpha_Plus · April 11, 2010

You make a good point, just a quick edit to fix that:

pathfinder · April 11, 2010

They keep getting better with each edit!

I like this image.

astrostu · April 11, 2010

Looks good.

schmoo · April 13, 2010

Whoah I love this idea and your execution of this. Fantastic and one of those "why did I never think of that?" moments.

Alpha_Plus · April 14, 2010

schmoo wrote:

Whoah I love this idea and your execution of this. Fantastic and one of those "why did I never think of that?" moments.

Thanks Schmoo. Got a little bit of inspiration seeing Marc Muench's shot of the Milky Way over San Francisco. Thought I might try it with just the stars coming out after sunset around home..

Side note: 100th Post

schmoo · April 14, 2010

Alpha_Plus wrote:

Thanks Schmoo. Got a little bit of inspiration seeing Marc Muench's shot of the Milky Way over San Francisco. Thought I might try it with just the stars coming out after sunset around home..

Side note: 100th Post

Congrats on 100th!

That's actually so awesome that you said that. I was inspired by Marc's Milky Way shot too although I wasn't quite as successful as you were. These shots are just so surreal in the best possible way.