Hello, these were my first attempts at taking several photos and trying to stack them in photoshop to reduce noise. It was much harder than all of the youtube tutorials made it seem. I had to try and align the stars manually which was a pain! I could never really get the result I was looking for. Also, in my post processing things kept getting more purple than I would like. I would love to know what you think? Are these decent photos for astrophotography? Any helpful tips would be appreciated!
Looks great to me!
Well...here is my opinion, and it's a matter of taste, not necessarily the correct way. I think your MW looks too bright for the surrounding darkness of the sky. I'd look for a bit more even lighting in the sky. Yes, it does look too purple/magenta for my taste as well. As far as alignment, you could try masking out the non sky in all your layers, and then having PS auto-align just the sky itself. That may help. I know people use Starry Landscape Stacker or Sequator with great results too.
As for myself, I track and stack, but I shoot my skies separately from my ground images. Since i'm tracking 100% sky, PS auto-align works perfectly every time, (even tracked, the stars are not perfect in camera. There is slight movement every 5+ minutes worth of images).
I then composite in my sky with my foreground images.
Thanks for your comments. I agree the MW is too bright compared to the sky. I don't do astrophotography enough to invest in a tracker. I also wasn't out there early enough to get a good foreground image and do some compositing. This was actually only the 3rd time I've tried my hand at some astrophotography. I wish I had some more time to do it because it's a lot of fun, especially the editing process. I tried the masking process you're talking about but could still never get it to work right. I'm sure it's something I was doing wrong, I'm not that familiar with PS. I am looking forward to doing some more astrophotography though and improving my skills it is a lot of fun!
BTW just checked out your portfolio, nice work!
Great work. And I like your portfolio. I am staggered how good some people are who only recently got into photography.I have been at it since 1970.
Thank you!