How to process star trails photos in Photoshop
In this video I show you how to process star trails photos quickly and simply using layers in Photoshop. Once you have shot your series of images, it is easy to combine them into your final star trails photo. The secret is all in the choice of blend mode. With just a couple of clicks you can make all the star trails appear. You will then also see how you can remove unwanted elements with layer masks.
You will see how we take a series of images like this one:
Then combine them to create a final star trails image:
Here is the video showing you how this was done:
So, remember to shoot all your initial pictures using the same settings so that you can batch process them using Lightroom. Then, all you need to do is bring them into Photoshop and change the blend mode. Yes, you can then do further processing if you wish. But, this is all that is needed to produce a star trails image. There are also various free programmes online that will perform a similar function if you don’t have Photoshop. For tips on how to shoot the initial photos please do read the blog post on photographing star trails.
© Joe Lenton, November 2016