Starry Landscape Stacker 4+

Great app!

How can you feather the paint brush when masking? The paint brush is set to the hardest edge possible and that makes masking a very time consuming and tedeous process. I saw in Ian Norman’s tutorial video that his brush was feathered and there is no obvious way to achieve that in the app.
Other than the paint brush feather issue this is a great app and very user friendly! I’ve achieved my best astro shots with the help of this app.

Thank you

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your feedback. I am glad you have had success with it. I am not sure how Ian Norman's tutorial showed a feathered brush. SLS has never had a feathered brush. The edge of the mask has to have a hard edge--feathered alignment just does not work. I am not sure how having a feathered brush makes it easier to make a mask. Perhaps you could contact me directly and we can find a way to make masking easier for you. Launch Starry Landscape Stacker, and under "Help" in the menu bar select "Email Developer".

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.

The go to!

This app has been invaluable in creating my Landscape Astrophotos. It's incredibly easy to use, making what would be an otherwise cumbersome process simple and fun.

I'm starting to do a lot of tracked expoures as well and I find sometimes it can have difficulty aligning properly if the total exposure time is too long (if the sky or foreground moves too much).

Moments ago i purchased Starry Sky Staker as well. I will try using this on some of my images with longer integration time to see if it handles it differently.

I can't recommend this app enough for anybody getting into Nightscape photography.. I mention it to anybody asking about how I make my photos.

As far as I'm aware, this is the only software for Mac users specifically designed for this purpose.. You can do the same processes in Photoshop, but it's a PITA. You can also use Pixinsight, but that is a fairly advanced (and expensive) software. SLS is a fantastic value and works excellently.

Thanks Ralph Hill!