Starry Landscape Stacker 4+

Good, but could be great

I'm giving this 4 stars because it is so useful.

1) could do a better job of picking star paths - red dots. I've spent hours picking missed star paths. Maybe provide a threshhold for edge contrast.
2) should stack the ground and the stars
3) should be able to stack low light images that are not stars and ground to remove noise.
4) Has Min and Max and average. Shouuld have a slider to weigh Min and Max when doing average.
5) Does a great job of removing jet trails, but also removes meteor trails.
6) I have to se the temp and Tint for input without a preview?
7) there are only two zoom options Actual Pixels and Fit to Frame - why is this not variable?
8) I don't see a way to save a file in the middle of working on it. After hours of picking stars and carefully outlining the ground, I a) save all optiosn because I don't want to spend hours re-creating the masks and stars b) I am in constant fear of my system crashing or (not likely) the app crashing.
9) I Pick Dots then Find Sky. I do not see any way of going back to pick or erase more dots once I Find Sky without starting all over.

Developer Response ,

I am glad you find the app useful. In general, if you have questions or suggestions, under "Help" in the menu bar you can send me an email message. I am usually able to respond in less than 24 hours. 1) I do not understand what you mean by star paths. The red dots are suspected stars and so, are believed to be sky. Most of the time you should not have to add red dots, and you certainly do not have to be careful about it. There are some instructional videos on this referenced in the documentation. If you are spending more then 30 seconds making the mask you either need to have a look at the documentation, or you need a very complex mask because of lots of trees or other foreground with sky visible through them.
2) Why do you think that SLS does not stack the foreground? SLS has always stacked the foreground. There is no option to not stack the ground.
3) I think you are looking for my app Long Exposure Stacker--search for the free trial to give it a try.
4) Send me mail (click on the help button in the menu bar). I would like to know more about what you want.
5) There is an instructional video referenced in the documentation on how to deal with meteors.
6) Yes, that sucks. Someday I will have time to do something better. The good news is that once you find settings that work for your camera at night, they should never change.
7) There are incremental zooms. ⌘+ and ⌘- just like most Mac apps.
8) I have thought about adding a way to save work, but given how quickly a mask can be made (often less than 30 seconds) I do not see the need to put time into that option.
9) "Edit Dots in Sky", top of the left column.

Updated review

So my last review was August 10th and since then the app has had a few updates and it keeps getting better.

There's now the option of doing noise and color noise reduction directly in the app and I've tested it by doing that and then not doing it and doing the noise reduction in photoshop and it looks like the noise correction in SLS is better!

It seems the masking has gotten better too. Most of my shots have trees and it used to be a pain but it does a mighty fine job. I also love how it will automatically reorient images becuase often after I shoot light frames I will set my camera to take 30 dark frames and then pack it up in my bag as I walk back to the car and if the camera turns it will think I'm taking portrait shots. So it's a huge help that I don't have to go in and manually reorient the shots before using the stacker.

Solid app - wish it were updated more

This is a solid app for landscape astrophotography. It mostly automates the mask and saves both the stacked image and masked portion as separate files if needed. There are a number of stacking modes to choose from and it’s pretty quick to process the image. At this point it’s outdated though. The masks aren’t as precise as they should be and competing products (for windows unfortunately) do a much better job in this regard. If the masks were tighter it would be a lot less noticeable along the edges of the foreground. Overall good and reliable but really hoping there’s some updates soon.

Developer Response ,

I am not sure what artifacts you are seeing with the masks. Perhaps you could send me a message directly and explain what you want. In the menu bar, under help "Email Developer".

The masks are intentionally loose on the horizon. If you make them too tight, you get artifacts in the stacked image. This is a result of atmospheric effects and possibly tiny movements of the camera. The current gaps between the mask and the ground was very carefully chosen. If you can show me that it is deficient in some way I will find a way to make things better.