Cheating at Night

ghinson

(sorry about the giant watermark, but want you to see the top anyway)

Took this star trails picture last night for the sole purpose of trying out a stock PS Action that ships with CS5. I had not seen it until yesterday, but there is a new action called "Star Trails." I have previously used the Star Trails stacking action that is available on the internet to stack multiple exposures of a starry sky and build such a picture. I was wondering if that is what the new built-in action was for. Just to see what it would do, I ran the action on this night shot, and wwooowww, it builds a night's worth of star trails out of a single exposure! Again, this is from one 15-sec exposure!

Granted, I had to go back to the original and mask out the lighthouse itself as the action twisted it on a radial as well. But, even though I am feeling a little guilty about this, I am thinking about collecting a set of north-facing night shots of nothing but a starry sky, and using them with this action to add star trails to any picture I want, and not have to go out and monitor the camera for 90 minutes in the cold!

Anyone else used this?