Combine star trails in Photoshop with an action

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Photographing star trails is fun. The results can be quite special. You can easily combine them with free software.

If you want to do this in Photoshop, an action can save you a lot of work. It is very easy to do. I explain it in a short video.

Have you ever photographed star trails? Then you know that combining all those photos can be quite a lot of work when you do it manually. Fortunately, there is software for this, often completely free, that can do it for you. StarStaX is one such programme.

If you want complete control over combining them, you can also do it in Photoshop. If necessary, in combination with Lightroom Classic. You do not have to do this manually. You can automate it with an action. It is not particularly difficult to create this action.

Once you have created the action, which is essentially recording the steps you need to take in Photoshop, you can do this at the press of a button. It does not matter whether you have 10 photos for your star trails, or 1,000 photos.

The trick is not to load all the photos as layers in Photoshop. That can become difficult. This method uses a great deal of memory and processing power.

You could do it in stages, each time with 10 or 20 photos. But why not combine everything in a single action?

By merging the layers after each photo you stack, you work with no more than two layers at the same time. This means you can do it with a relatively basic computer. You do not need a huge amount of memory or a super-fast computer.

If you work from Lightroom Classic, it is also useful that the final result from Photoshop is loaded directly into Lightroom Classic. This means you can simply include it in your workflow. It makes combining star trails even easier.

I have recorded a video in which I explain this step by step. You only have to follow the steps, and you have created your own action. However, if you want to learn how to photograph star trails, have a look at my course on Photofacts Academy.

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