Stacking whilst keeping foreground horizon in focus?

[stephenb]

I have 30-odd widefield shots of the Aquila region with a partial horizion in view consisting of mostly trees and tree-line. Is there a trick to stacking the widefield sky and stacking the treeline to keep the trees in focus?

Regards,
Stephen

[stephenb]

Sorry, here's a quickie I took the other night.

[iceman]

There's no way without making a composite. Stack for the sky, and then take a single exposure of the foreground that you like, and put it in the right position over your stacked photo.

[stephenb]

So it's really a Photoshop job then? That make sense, I'll try it next time, thanks Mike.

[mswhin63]

I usually use the last or the first image taken and outline copy and paste onto the final stack image. I have never tried it but possibly Registax can align the foreground while DSS aligns the backgraound. The 2 resulting images are then cut and pasted in a way to get a clear foreground and background.

http://www.waelect.com.au/mswhin63/Widefield/index.html#2011_05_06.png

The one shown above link was a very rough cut and paste and you can easily see the outline. On my next ones I hope to find out how to define the outline better so as not to show the outline.

[mswhin63]

That is an interesting way, I may try it next time.

[Poita]

This is exactly what I do take a good exposure locked off for the foreground, and I usually bracket it, so I can bring out the shadow and highlight detail later if needed, then comp it into the final shot later, it can look fantastic.

[iceman]

Ditto! ^^

[stephenb]

Thanks all, I'll attempt it in a couple of weeks when the Moon is out of the way. I'm looking at this one of Aquila and there's something not quite right about it. It just doesn't "jump" out at me as a decent pic. Is it simply lacking the detail/data? Need more shots? or longer exposures? This one was done with 30 x 8 sec.