Stacking Tips

Stacey L · June 17, 2005

Hello:

I'm going to be chaperoning a mission trip to the Dominican Republic in about two weeks and I'm looking for some fairy straight forward easy tips on stacking (for noise reduction and low light) using Paint Shop Pro 8. I recognize many of your names from STF, but I was a major lurker there so I only posted a couple of times.

I did a search in this particular room but didn't find anything, so if there's more out there could you please direct me to the proper place?

Thanks!
Stacey

Stacey L · June 18, 2005

Anyone at all....

Skippy · June 18, 2005

Hi ya Stacey

Stacey L wrote:

Hello:

I'm going to be chaperoning a mission trip to the Dominican Republic in about two weeks and I'm looking for some fairy straight forward easy tips on stacking (for noise reduction and low light) using Paint Shop Pro 8. I recognize many of your names from STF, but I was a major lurker there so I only posted a couple of times. I did a search in this particular room but didn't find anything, so if there's more out there could you please direct me to the proper place?

Thanks!
Stacey

Sorry I don't have an answer for you, just wanted to say hi, hopefully someone else who uses that program will jump in and help you out with an answer soon.
Nice to you see you over there, there's quite a few people from the Old STF here, hope you find dgrin as warm and friendly as many of us have.
Skippy (Australia)

Phil U. · June 18, 2005

Stacey L wrote:

Hello:

I'm going to be chaperoning a mission trip to the Dominican Republic in about two weeks and I'm looking for some fairy straight forward easy tips on stacking (for noise reduction and low light) using Paint Shop Pro 8. I recognize many of your names from STF, but I was a major lurker there so I only posted a couple of times. I did a search in this particular room but didn't find anything, so if there's more out there could you please direct me to the proper place?

Thanks!
Stacey

Hi there. Stacking is something that may be a little daunting to some at first, but once you get it you've got it.

Here are a couple links (from STF actually) that I found quite useful when I started playing with stacking. These are probably for photoshop, but you should be able to do the same stuff in PSP (although the key combinations will probably be different).

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1009&message=2799086

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1009&message=10396726

I actually use Monky's method in the 2nd link that seems to work pretty well.

The most important part of stacking is the shoot. You've got to make sure you get what you need on location. Processing can always be redone but since you can't just go back and re-shoot in this case, make sure you get that part right. You might want to practice a few times before going. Make sure you've got a steady tripod so you'll have exposures that will line up perfectly. When you do your different exposures, make sure you keep the aperature the same and adjust shutter speed (if you change ap, you'll change DOF and it'll get ugly). Make sure you don't change focus distance between exposures (best to use manual but if you use auto, let it get the focus and then switch to manual so it won't re-focus for the next exposures). A slight change in focus can mess up the stack.

Those are a couple of the "gotchas" I've run into.

Hope this is of some help to you. Show us the results!

Stacey L · June 18, 2005

Thank you guys for the tips. I'll try these and let you know how I make out. Someone from STF wrote a tutorial on stacking, but it was a bit more advanced and some of the instructions read like Greek to me.

Phil U. wrote:

Hi there. Stacking is something that may be a little daunting to some at first, but once you get it you've got it.

Here are a couple links (from STF actually) that I found quite useful when I started playing with stacking. These are probably for photoshop, but you should be able to do the same stuff in PSP (although the key combinations will probably be different).

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1009&message=2799086

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1009&message=10396726

I actually use Monky's method in the 2nd link that seems to work pretty well.

The most important part of stacking is the shoot. You've got to make sure you get what you need on location. Processing can always be redone but since you can't just go back and re-shoot in this case, make sure you get that part right. You might want to practice a few times before going. Make sure you've got a steady tripod so you'll have exposures that will line up perfectly. When you do your different exposures, make sure you keep the aperature the same and adjust shutter speed (if you change ap, you'll change DOF and it'll get ugly). Make sure you don't change focus distance between exposures (best to use manual but if you use auto, let it get the focus and then switch to manual so it won't re-focus for the next exposures). A slight change in focus can mess up the stack.

Those are a couple of the "gotchas" I've run into.

Hope this is of some help to you. Show us the results!

luke_church · June 23, 2005

Stacey L wrote:

Hello:

I'm going to be chaperoning a mission trip to the Dominican Republic in about two weeks and I'm looking for some fairy straight forward easy tips on stacking (for noise reduction and low light) using Paint Shop Pro 8. I recognize many of your names from STF, but I was a major lurker there so I only posted a couple of times. I did a search in this particular room but didn't find anything, so if there's more out there could you please direct me to the proper place?

Thanks!
Stacey

If you throw me the data for averaging for noise reduction I'll throw it through some software and written to do the job automatically and give you it back. I won't give you the code, because it has *no* user interface at the moment.

If you prefer more control, I understand. Bloke at the www.luminous-landscape.com did some stuff on blending a while back, that'll help if you doing blending, but not so useful for stacking...

Really **must** get the time to get it fixed and released...

Luke

devbobo · June 23, 2005

Stacey L wrote:

Hello:

I'm going to be chaperoning a mission trip to the Dominican Republic in about two weeks and I'm looking for some fairy straight forward easy tips on stacking (for noise reduction and low light) using Paint Shop Pro 8. I recognize many of your names from STF, but I was a major lurker there so I only posted a couple of times. I did a search in this particular room but didn't find anything, so if there's more out there could you please direct me to the proper place?

Thanks!
Stacey

Stacey,

Stacking for noise reduction is pretty straight forward. Firstly, you need to take multiple exposures at the same settings. You then open the individual images into your post-processing package. You then copy and paste each image as a new layer into one single image. After this you need to ensure that the layers are aligned properly. You now set the opacity of each layer as follows...
- Base Layer
- Layer #1 1/2 = 0.5 opacity
- Layer #2 1/3 = 0.33 opacity
- Layer #3 1/4 = 0.25 opacity
- Layer #4 1/5 = 0.2 opacity
...etc...

Here's a few examples...

Original (single exposure)

Stacked (6 exposures)

And here's a 3 photo panorama (3 exposures per photo)

Luben is the master of stacking and low light, you should check out the tutorials on his website http://www.solev.net.

Hope this helps,

David

Stacking Tips

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