Aligning images taken from shaky tripod


marv0083

New Member
Dec 23, 2010
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Hi I was out doing star trails at night. I'm using my NEX 6 I don't have a trigger with me. Each press on the shutter on a light weight tripod moved the frame a bit. I didn't know the frame was changing with this tripod as I didn't bring my heavy duty tripod. my question is do you know of any program that can align images taken? so I can stack them on startrails program and salvage the photos I took last night.

TIA
 

you need to have some none movable objects that don't move in the photos, like buildings, mountain, rocks, but trees are not good, as they do sway with the wind.

than you use photoshop, file/scripts/load files into stack...

follow the commend, after you load up all the images into layers of one document, start aligning the layers, it may take awhile, once done, crop it down and export layers into individuals documents. that's it.

make sure your comp have enough RAM and fast enough, the last time I try to align a set of timelapse sequent consist of 360 tiff files, it took more than 7-8 hours to run, and it hang couple of times, and I spent about a week of trying and finally succeed.

hope this help.
 

you need to have some none movable objects that don't move in the photos, like buildings, mountain, rocks, but trees are not good, as they do sway with the wind.

than you use photoshop, file/scripts/load files into stack...

follow the commend, after you load up all the images into layers of one document, start aligning the layers, it may take awhile, once done, crop it down and export layers into individuals documents. that's it.

make sure your comp have enough RAM and fast enough, the last time I try to align a set of timelapse sequent consist of 360 tiff files, it took more than 7-8 hours to run, and it hang couple of times, and I spent about a week of trying and finally succeed.

hope this help.

Hi Catchlights,

Yup I have an immovable foreground for stacking but the problem I have is tripod moved every time I pressed the shutter :( each frame is not aligned properly. Do you have info on this kind of problem? Tried searching the net for this. It is very hard to find info for this kind of problem.

I use startrails.de's free software to stack images automatically. If one of the images is misaligned the output is blurred foreground and crooked star trails. never tried it in Photoshop. I have 12gb of ram and quad core is that enough?
 

Hi Catchlights,

Yup I have an immovable foreground for stacking but the problem I have is tripod moved every time I pressed the shutter :( each frame is not aligned properly. Do you have info on this kind of problem? Tried searching the net for this. It is very hard to find info for this kind of problem.

I use startrails.de's free software to stack images automatically. If one of the images is misaligned the output is blurred foreground and crooked star trails. never tried it in Photoshop. I have 12gb of ram and quad core is that enough?

the Photoshop load files into stack can be use for aligning a series of photos that some are not in alignment.

once you correct the alignment of your images, you need to use other software to create the startrails.


FYI, should be any problem with your computer set up.
 

the Photoshop load files into stack can be use for aligning a series of photos that some are not in alignment.

once you correct the alignment of your images, you need to use other software to create the startrails.




FYI, should be any problem with your computer set up.


Thanks! I'll try to Photoshop program for stacking if it solves the problem
 

Photoshop. Edit > Auto-align.
 

Photoshop can align without any landmark in the image for reference, such as a building?
The image in question will be just full of "light" spots!

Would be easier just to reshoot with a study tripod and use a remote than try to align the "shakes"
 

Last edited:
Hi I solved the problem already
Photoshop CS5 with Dr. Brown's Service's 2.3.1 :)

Just load images to bridge then highlight the images to align and stack. Just follow the one in the youtube video (4:00 to 5:00) I posted but click auto align. The aligning of images can be time consuming. I'm trying to batch align first.
 

Sometimes its hard for one to start searching because we dont have the right concept and keywords to start with. Instead of asking one to do a search, one can help by just pointing the right direction as what Catchlights has done.
 

Sometimes its hard for one to start searching because we dont have the right concept and keywords to start with. Instead of asking one to do a search, one can help by just pointing the right direction as what Catchlights has done.

exactly! thanks Jace
 

sharing with you the output from the shaky frames. Really worked well! :)

took roughly an hour to process each photo. Auto align is time consuming but worth the wait to salvage photos that was misaligned
31549_10151127620051104_279538972_n.jpg


68616_10151127620211104_1489688134_n.jpg
 

nice end product!
 

Thanks for sharing your photos,
glad to know you have solve the problem.

btw, these are not taken in Singapore?


taken from the Philippines. I'm from the Philippines by the way.