![]() ![]() With the final “good” version of the star trail stacked up, there are normally some other defects I have still missed. Rather than throw out entire frames, I simply black out the clouds.įinal Retouch in Affinity Photo & Capture One The lighten only blending would keep these clouds since they are brighter than the background. In this star trail, the combination of light pollution from the city and the moon lit up some clouds in the center of the frame. The same approach works on clouds that wonder through the frame. ![]() A viewer won’t notice the breaks unless they study the image closely searching for them. ![]() This isn’t a big deal for me most of the time as long as there are enough stars in the sky. The disadvantage of blacking out defects is that it can create breaks in individual star tracks. It will often duplicate nearby stars adding a new defect and breaking up your star trail. InPaint doesn’t know where stars should be and sees them as texture. Second, no fake stars are added in the cleared area. The computer doesn’t have to use a bunch of complex AI to fill in the area. There are two advantages of this method over something more complicated, such as the InPaint brush. The blacked out areas will be overwritten by the other frames in the star trail. Because of that, I can use a black paint brush to remove areas of individual frames. To stack a star trail, we keep only the lighter pixels from each frame. I wait until my final pass to use it as a way to speed things up. Gap Filling is fundamentally based on Lighten Only blending, but is much slower. Once I’ve got all the defects removed, I switch to “Gap Filling” mode in StarStaX. Normally, as I did this time, I missed some planes and I have to make another pass or two through the images removing unwanted plane trails. ![]() Once I go through all the images once removing all the planes I see, I return to StarStaX and restack them. If they are moving perpendicular to the star trails, I will remove them from the finished star trail all at one time. If their movement is close to parallel to the stars (as they are in this star trail), I will remove them from the individual frames. Which strategy I use depends on how the airplanes are moving relative to the stars. I use two different strategies for removing airplanes from my star trails. In a location like this, facing Los Angeles, airplanes are a serious issue. Once the images are exported from Capture One, I open them in StarStaX and do a quick lighten-only stack to see where things stand. Once I’m happy with an individual image, I sync those adjustments to all the images in the star trail and export the resulting images. I start by processing one of the images in Capture One. When I edit a star trail I take an iterative approach. Light pollution, airplanes, moon rise, and clouds are just a few of them. There are a lot of complications that can arise when shooting a star trail. Editing a Star Trail: Capture One, StarStaX and Affinity Photo For information about the different types of remote releases available, see my remote release article. The camera will take 30 second exposures as fast as possible.įor more information on this technique, check out A Star Trail Photography Primer. To take the star trail, lock the button on the remote “on”. Set your camera for a 30 second exposure, and continuous-high release mode. This method works with almost any camera system and requires only a super cheap wired remote. Things kick off with photographing a star trail the simple way: using a “dumb remote”. I edit the RAW files in Capture One, and then iterate through stacking the images in StarStax and removing airplanes and clouds in Affinity Photo. Then I go through an entire edit from start to finish. In this video I go through the entire process of photographing the star trail including dealing with light pollution. Photographing star trails involves a lot of complications. ![]()
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