Added a vignette with a “Not D1” BlendIf to protect the shadows.Used a darkening brightness/contrast layer in the top left to reduce some flare on the rocks from moonlight.Used ACR adjustments, Nik, and curves with dark luminosity masks from Lumenzia to help extract shadow detail.After I finished the video, I did the following to create the final image: The YouTube tutorial above was getting a bit long, so I didn’t show all the final post-processing I did. Now put your sky layer(s) and foreground layer into the document and add a layer mask to combine them.If you need to fill gaps in the star trails, try adding a Gaussian blur with radius 0.5-1.0.If you don’t merge, put them all in a Smart Object or create a stamp visible layer to use the next steps. You may choose to save your layers so you can edit further later, but it’s a significant tradeoff. For dramatically smaller files and faster performance: select all your layers, right-click and merge to a single layer.Alternatively, select all layers and then go to Layers / Hide All Layers. When you reach the end and release the mouse button, all layers should show (or hide if you were hiding the first icon you clicked on). Then click on the visibility icon of the top layer and then (without releasing the mouse button) drag down so that the mouse goes over the visibility icon of all the layers. The goal is to have something which is perfectly aligned with the star images (use a tripod) and ultimately has low noise (use ISO -click one of the groups to expand/collapse all. This might be taken at the blue hour, using light painting, or just a very long exposure with ambient light (potentially moonlight). It would be very tricky to determine an exposure which shows the stars, keeps the right balance of blue sky, and does not blow out the foreground in the bright (and constantly changing) moonlight. Avoid the complication of trying to calculate a safe exposure to use for an hour.It can potentially make it easier to clone out complications (meteors, satellites, planes, hot pixels, etc) from a short exposure frame instead of a full star trail image.Just use as many images as you need until you have the rotation you want in the image. You to choose the exact arc of rotation you wish to see in your final image without complex planning.Keep the option to process a single sharp image (such a beautiful meteor passing through a frame) or to create a time-lapse video.Minimize potential problems with moving trees in the wind.Unless you’re shooting on a very cold night, you’ll see more and more hot pixel problems with longer exposures. You won’t lose hours of work work if something goes wrong – such as someone shining a headlamp into your image, lens flare if the moon moves into a problematic position, the camera getting bumped, batteries dying, etc.There are several benefits to shooting star trails as a stack of short exposures rather than a single long exposure, including: You can capture such a scene with a single long exposure, but you can often get a better image or simplify processing by taking a serious of short exposures to blend together. In this image, they not only draw your attention towards the a moonlit focal point, they also echo the shape of the surrounding arches to help tie everything together. Star trails can be a powerful way to compliment and accentuate a subject.
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