Category Archives: Advanced Stacker

Philosophy of Advanced Stacker PLUS

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ASP14e-500

Coming soon…

Our 14e release is imminent. But after looking at our survey results and the most recently reported issues, we thought it wise to provide some hints to help you use the current software and to help you understand tradeoffs we made.

Our most commonly reported issue is something we struggled with. In an attempt to help users understand features we caused confusion. What are we talking about?  There are pop up windows: some of which should be Continued some of which should be Stopped. The only notification tool that works across all versions of Photoshop reliably doesn’t allow much customization, so when confronted with each of these dialogs, its understandable why some people click Stop when they should Continue and click Continue when they should Stop. The pop-up window below was the worst. We added highlighting to make it easy to see the difference, but we can’t use color or graphics on the actual pop-up without creating compatibility problems.  Do you notice the difference?

ASP14d_NotStop

This dialog indicates that the Watermark Alignment is not set… click CONTINUE

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If you stop on the first dialog, the layers needed to do stacking are not created and you will get errors the first of which is usually “Move is not currently available”

Move Not Available

Move Not Available

Once there is any kind of error it’s time to Stop and restart because manipulating layers in Photoshop is a little fragile.  The good news is the first pop-up can be turned off. The better news is that in 14e we have already turned it off for you. In fact in 14e we’ve trimmed down interaction as much as possible but still kept the awesome extra features.  Here is how to turn off the first pop-up (the one regarding Watermark Alignment) in version 14d and earlier.

Stop the Pop

Stop the Pop – disable the “Stop” step in Align My Watermark

Power of the Batch

The Advanced Stacker PLUS derives much of it’s power from two key things: Photoshop’s ability to batch process images AND Photoshop’s ability to open just about any image format on the planet.  Batch processing works because it is possible to use File -> Automate -> Batch to hurl a handful or a folder full of images at customized scripts and actions.  While Adobe Photoshop Elements has a “batch processor” there is no way to do operations other than those that are built-in to the software and that’s why ASP doesn’t support Elements.

One of the weaknesses of using Photoshop’s captive power is that it requires exploiting the tool in ways that are “allowed”.  While we like Adobe Photoshop CC, there are still many people who are very happy with older, non-cloud versions of Photoshop like CS3 or CS4.  We chose to not abandon that 35% of our customers so we support ALL CS versions of Photoshop on both Mac and PC. and that means we limit our actions and scripts to features that are common across all those versions and platforms. Readers may not be aware, for example, that while Adobe has published tools for customizing the interface, those tools have generally only supported the “latest” version of software. Indeed one of the most used tools (Configurator) has been abandoned and is no longer supported.

Another tradeoff has been in how we document our features. For example the File -> Automate -> Batch method of stacking a folder full of files is workable, if inelegant. But we use the Photoshop Bridge method of feeding the stacker and like it much more for several significant reasons.  One huge advantage of using Bridge is that you can actually see the content of the files. Another obvious advantage is that you are not constrained by what’s in your folder. If you have 29 shots from one sequence and 120 of another sequence you don’t have to split those shots between folders. And, in fact, with Bridge to select files you don’t have to use the same stacking method for all the files of one set, or have files from only one folder!

A word about 14E

As noted above, version 14E is imminent. Surprisingly the biggest obstacle has not been the additional features, the primary obstacle has been packaging and delivering the content. Windows 8.1 and Mac OSX 10.9 have gotten very protective of their machines and throw up many roadblocks to try to keep your machine safe from viruses and trojans. This means we had to invest $1500 dollars to become an LLC, get signed up for the Mac developer plan, get a Mac code signing certificate and get a code signing certificate for Windows, too! That doesn’t include acquiring a Mac or polishing the scripts and installers on each machine. Here is what the problem looks like on a Windows PC using Internet Explorer without signed code (it’s just as bad with Safari on Mac).

ASP_IE_RunAnyway

In fact, on both machines even though the code is signed (proving its provenance), you are still likely to get a warning like “This is not a commonly downloaded file”. It might be easier if we could email it to you, right? Except that Google, Yahoo and many others will not deliver an email that includes any executable content.

Both PCs and Macs have reached this point described in a Mac advertisement from 2009 that pokes fun at Vista’s intrusive safety system. Guess what… both machines are becoming like this because there are so many, uh, jerks out there eager to harm you electronically.

Our holy grail has been to create a single deliverable package that works both on a PC and on your Mac that we can document clearly, simply and as completely as possible.  That was probably too high a goal.

What’s coming in 14e?

  • Installation now is as simple as clicking.
  • EXIF data for the first image is preserved
  • New stacking mode of Ultra Streaks
  • Streamlined pop-ups to the minimum
  • Fully supports paths on both PC and Mac
  • Installation works for ALL versions of Photoshop CS you have installed on your machine
  • A price increase. But current owners will get the upgrade for free.
  • Some features we’re keeping under wraps for now.

Doing things Backward in Advanced Stacker PLUS

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Push Me - Pull You

Star Trails tapered in TWO directions… read on for how.

First we confess… Doing things backward applies to all manner of operations, not just Advanced Stacker PLUS so this technique is useful for almost any kind of batch processing.

By far the most IMPRACTICAL way to stack your shots in reverse order is to reverse time before taking your shots so that they will be numbered as you wish. Another eminently impractical way to shoot star trails backwards is to reverse the earth’s rotation before shooting that sequence of shots. 🙂

We’re pretty sure you are looking for a more practical solution, though! And here we offer a strategy that takes full advantage of Photoshop’s relentless bent on processing photos in alphabetical order.  To make everything run “backward” we need to reverse the alphabetical order of the photos.  Unfortunately, there is no number these files backward feature. We wish! There are some standalone programs for doing sophisticated file renaming but here we will use a tool you already have: Adobe Bridge. Adobe Lightroom can be used too – if you are anxious to know how, leave a comment and we will elaborate.

Here is a quick comparison. The first shot is “reversed” causing the stars in the Northern Hemisphere to be rotating clockwise instead of the counter-clockwise direction that they ACTUALLY move in.  While exactly the same shots were used in each case, the photos reveal one reason why you might want to reverse the order – to get a sky flavored with a bit of twilight blue.

130-41ReversedComet 130-41Comet

We have a lengthy article on how to use Adobe Bridge to feed the Advanced Stacker PLUS, so let’s start with using Bridge.  Below is what our directory of files looks like. We compacted our Bridge display to make it easy to get a reasonable size screen capture. We slid the  leftmost divider (normally it shows filters and folders) to the left.  Notice the “content” pane contains thumbnails and the Preview pane shows the two files we selected – one obviously taken earlier when there was yet some blue twilight, and the other taken later.

Reversing the File Order – Adobe Bridge

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Arrows below indicate places where we can control the view that Bridge shows us.

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Some key controls for manipulating the Bridge display are shown.

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NOTE: You do not have to change the view, you can use the Sort option and uncheck the “Ascending” order.

We find that the easiest way to reverse the displayed order is to change to List view. And then click on the header to reverse the sort order. While we can change the sort order directly (see sidebar) we prefer the neater view we get in List mode.

Clicking the triangle on the Name column at the top of our content pane reverses the sort order and results in the display as shown at the right.

gs_2014-02-26_081642gs_2014-02-26_083730

Unfortunately Photoshop will not be swayed by the different sort order… it insists on processing files in ALPHABETICAL order. Our solution is to change the names of our files to reflect the desired ordering.

Batch Rename

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Batch rename (under Tools) gives us the ability to copy or move files while renaming them.  Fortunately when we use the rename tool, it DOES respect our sort order. Our strategy is to use our reversed-order file list and place an increasing sequence number at the beginning of each file name. By prepending to the file name we can force the first file in our sorted list to become first alphabetically.  Bridge has a built in “Sequence Number” which automatically increments.

We do this often enough that we took the extra step to save the configuration as a preset.

gs_2014-02-26_082508
Adding a 3-digit prefix followed by a dash character. To add or remove items from the rename click the + or – icons.

The important points are:

  1. We must prefix a sequence number.
  2. We strongly suggest “Preserving the current file name in the XMP data” so we can return the files to the original name if we wish.  Or instead of renaming them, select “copy” and place the result in a separate folder.

Once we have our renumbered files, we can feed them to Photoshop just as we described in the Stacking with Bridge article.  And, if use the “preserve file name in XMP” option, we can easily rename the files back to their original names using the batch rename. The small trick for this is described at the end of the video below.

Batch Renaming – The Video

Reversing the ordering of files for Advanced Stacker PLUS (Using Adobe Bridge)

 

Using Lightroom To Rename

Using Lightroom has many drawbacks as we previously described.  Lightroom also has a rename function (F2), it is, however a bit more tedious to set up.  The other important thing to remember about using Lightroom for stacking is that Lightroom insists on exporting files before you are able to stack them.  And because of these two complexities, we decided to stop writing here.  If you really want to know how to use Lightroom to accomplish the same task, plead with us in the comments below.  Or better yet, offer us bribes!