Page 84 - BBC Sky at Night - September 2017 UK

SKILLS
84

Image With

Daniel Lynch
PROCESSING

Revealing coronal detail in solar eclipse images

Elevate your eclipse photos and see the full majesty of the Sun’s plasma aura

! Editing each frame before stacking can make a huge difference to detail; on the left is an untouched still, right the same frame after minor editing
he total solar eclipse of included. It’s amazing what results you can the shadow slider to +10 to enhance it.
21 August 2017 will probably get with even modest equipment. Save the file by clicking Done and repeat
be the most photographed in We shot in RAW mode to achieve the for all the photos you will be stacking.
T history. If you want to make best image quality. The telescope wasn’t Already you should see a big improvement
your images of the eclipse stand out, motor-driven, which adds to the challenge in each of your individual photos. Now we
you’ll have to go the extra mile. One of stacking the images, but we’ll also show are ready to stack the images to bring out
way to do that is to stack your images you how to align your photos in Photoshop even more detail.
to enhance detail in the Sun’s corona. to overcome this problem. Open Adobe Bridge and select each of
The corona is made up of the bright the prepared images by holding down Ctrl
inner corona and the dimmer outer corona. Process individually first and left-clicking each image. Click Tools >
While our eyes are excellent at handling Choose several photos of totality that have Photoshop > Load Files into Photoshop
the difference in brightness, cameras are different camera settings. Preferably, you Layers to open them in Photoshop. They
not. This difference in brightness is called want images of the inner and outer corona. will be visible on the right-hand side as
ALL PICTURES: DANIEL LYNCH dynamic range. Here we outline a method individually before stacking them. Our right-hand side, highlight each layer by
It is a good idea to process each photo
separate layers. In the layers tab on the
to achieve high dynamic range (sometimes
recipe for preparing each image starts with
holding down the control button and
abbreviated to HDR) for your eclipse
single-clicking them. Make them smart
opening them in Adobe Bridge. Right click
photos using three photos taken in Libya in
2006. They were captured using a Canon
objects by clicking Layer > Smart Objects
on your first image and select Open in
> Convert to Smart Object – doing so
Camera Raw. Set the clarity slider to +75
EOS 20D DSLR attached to a Bresser
70mm refractor that cost only £50, tripod
skyatnightmagazine.com 2017 to show the finer detail of the corona and preserves the original photos and allows us