Image Stacking in CS6

[Big Stan]

I originally owned CS3 Extended and over the years as I up-graded I migrated to CS6 Standard. I am now motivated to exploring Image Stacking to improve SNR. Obviously, CS6 Standard does not support SNR (Medium or Mean modes) image stacking. I have plenty of disk memory (over 700GB free on my internal drive and a spare external 500GB drive) and 8GB of RAM. Are there any problems with running both versions of Photoshop? My plan would be to perform the stacking in CS3 and then move the file to CS6. I tried to get my question answered by Adobe and after 45 minutes of getting no place, I gave up. I guess I'll just add my name to the huge list of customers who are totally unsatisfied with Adobe customer support.

[russellsnr]

Hi, To stack images have a look at CombineZP it is free and quite good.
Russ

[Big Stan]

Thank you for your suggestion. I went to the Wiki site and it appears that CombineZP is used for focus, "CombineZP is Free software image processing software package for creating extended depth of field images." I am trying to solve a signal to noise problem encountered when performing high ISO imaging (Astrophotography with landscape).

[Cantab]

Stan, I've not tried it my self but have you seen the following recent thread on stacking to reduce noise Stacking for noise (actually it was stacking to reduce people!). One of the posts has a link to the following site on stacking in Photoshop: http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/usi...ml?PID=5145718 .

[Big Stan]

Thanks, but that requires an upgrade to CS6 Extended (about $550). I guess I am too cheap to spend $550, just to satisfy my desire to explore a new technique.

[Loose Canon]

Are there any problems with running both versions of Photoshop? My plan would be to perform the stacking in CS3 and then move the file to CS6.

Should be no problems Stan.

You wouldn't have them both open at once but if you did there should be no problems. I have several versions of PS and I've had more than one open at once. No biggie!

[proseak]

That isn't a problem - I still have PS7, CS3, CS5, and 6 on my machine but no longer use 3.

To improve SNR, try this;

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...ging-noise.htm