Help aligning HDR merge

[GT_IE]

I am pretty new to AP and still learning my way around.  I need some advice on how to handle an alignment problem.

 

i’ve shot a moonrise over the skyline of a big city.  The moon was almost full and very low in the sky, just over the top of the skyscrapers.  It was 40 minutes after sunset, so it was already quite dark.  So, I took about 8 shots at various shutter speeds so that I would have several bracketed around the correct exposure for the moon and several more bracketed around the correct exposure for the skyline.  With so many shots, and with the extra delay for mirror lockup for each shot, it took over a minute to snap all the photos.  As a result, the moon moved quite a bit over the set of shots.

 

if I don’t auto align, then the buildings stack perfectly and make a very nice hdr composite, but the moon is a disaster.  If I manage to get them to align the moon, then the buildings would become blurry.

 

in a perfect world, i guess I would separate the sky from the city, merge the stack of sky pieces, merge the stack of ciy pieces, then put the 2 merged pieces back together somehow.

 

any suggestions?

[John Rostron]

On 05/05/2018 at 1:51 AM, GT_IE said:

in a perfect world, i guess I would separate the sky from the city, merge the stack of sky pieces, merge the stack of ciy pieces, then put the 2 merged pieces back together somehow.

I would do that in this imperfect world! It would seem to be the logical way to go.

John

 

Mods: please move this to Questions, where it belongs.

[p_mac]

Hey GT_IE, try Focus Merge.  

In the 200+ video tutorials for Affinity Photo, look for the subheading 

Focus Merging (Focus Stacking).

There are 3 excellent videos that will explain how you can perhaps get the result you want.  

 

The list I am I am referring to is on the first page of the Tutorial section in case you haven’t seen it yet.  

 

I just finished something similar.