Aligning Sun in Photoshop

[Episkey]

Hey,

I'm looking to do a solar eclipse animation in Photoshop CS5, and was wondering how you aligned the sun to the same position in every picture?

Thanks

[jgs001]

I did a solar animation (not an eclipse sadly) using multiple layers... Using two images as the example, it scales well, select the second image (CTRL-A) copy and paste it, into the first image, this will create a new layer. Adjust the opacity of the second layer down to something like 40% (ish), then using the arrow tool (top of the tool palette I think) adjust the position to suit.

[Episkey]

Thanks.. I've tried this and it works out pretty good but if your taking hundreds of pictures, this can be a pain and I was wondering if you could do it automatically.

[iwatkins]

Are all the images full disks?

If so you might want to pre-process the images using something like Castrator, if the source is video or PIPP if the source is video/stills. This will give you a pile of images that are cropped/centred.

Castrator: http://www.astrokraai.nl/castrator.php

PIPP: http://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/

Cheers

Ian

[Episkey]

They are all single shot full disk images. Thanks... I will try that.

[Photosbykev]

Grab a copy of DVS http://windowsillobservatory.wordpress.com/daves-video-stabiliser/ and let it do all the hard work for you, including alignment, cropping and text overlay.