# Photo blending IE night sky photography with lightroom or a plugin?



## Bren_Oz (Feb 18, 2015)

Hi All,
 I've tried to do a search for this subject and it didn't seem to bring what i was looking for to my eye.
Sorry if this has been covered please point me to the thread? 
OK, below is David Woodworth's image and this is what I'm hoping to achieve at some point. I'm getting into astrophotography and I'm finding I need to take one shot at high ISO short exposure to keep the stars sharp and another 10 minute exposure to get the foreground. I would love lightroom to be able to do this. I don't want to have to spend big dollars on PS just to do this one thing. It's about the only thing I would use PS for and that's a ridiculous amount of money to spend for one job! All the other forums spoke of enfuse but it seems to be more of an HDR software and Zerene which I use all the time to do macro will struggle with the stars moving that far. Anybody seeing lightroom truly becoming the only photographers tool? PS is amazing but I don't want to do fine art graphics only photo work and elements just isn't enough. 
Anybody have any suggestions??
Thank you so much,
Brenda


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## clee01l (Feb 18, 2015)

The solution is not in LR and probably not in the Zerene stacker either.  I think you need to use an external editor that is capable of working with layers.  Photoshop is the usual example of a program that  can routinely do this.  LR can not manage layers although it can preserve the layers if they are present in the cataloged image.


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## davidedric (Feb 18, 2015)

Photoshop Elements will do the job at a much more reasonable price, currently around $75 (don't know in Aussie dollars)

Dave


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## johnbeardy (Feb 18, 2015)

Did you see this article by Adam? http://luminous-landscape.com/introduction-to-landscape-astrophotography/

Also, see http://luminous-landscape.com/astrophotography-next-steps/  - from the paragraph Astro Stacking Software.


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## Bren_Oz (Feb 20, 2015)

Hi everyone,
 Thanks you all for helping me out! I will delve a little further into the subject and read up on all the great stuff you have suggested. 

Just a note, I contacted Rik of Zerene staker and he thinks it can be done quite easily. You can turn the align images off and that should work as long as you didn't move the tripod. So no touching once you start. I have a cam ranger and I will use that for the whole job.
I'll try to remeber to let you all know how it goes.

All the Best,
Bren


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