Star Photography Tutorial: Part I

I've gotten so many questions about my star photography lately that I decided to put together a few tutorials to help everyone out. If you still have more questions after reading through the tutorial feel free to get in touch. Once you get the hang of regular star shots and processing you can move onto massive panoramas as I have included below. Here is a little more about the shot. I took 11 shots at Ruby Beach, WA on the Olympic Peninsula last weekend. The moon was barely visible and the Milky Way covered the sky.

Star Photography Tutorial: Part I

Processing Technique:

First sync all 11 shots in Lightroom 4 so they will blend nicely once merged. After that Photoshop 6 Photomerge blends them all together. The next step is "free transform" which in this case took around an hour to straighten the picture out. OUCH. Next step, some general luminosity masks on the stars and a little levels work. After that, some dodge and burn action with a 50% grey layer. Final step noise reduction with Nik Define. Hope you guys like this one as much as I enjoyed putting it together. After trying the tips, please share your star pics through email, G+ or whatever for you like. I would love to see them.

Shot Details:

300MP

250MB file size

27000 pixels horizontal.