Photo stacking in CS5 or lightroom 4.2

[Redback200]

Hi,

I have some shots of a storm that was over Newcastle and want to stack some of the images together but when I do it always turns out crap. Below is an example. I think this one was attempted with HDR stacking. Since then I have downloaded and automation process in photoshop but when I use that one the details seem to be washed out and blurry. If someone has a process that works for them or knows a tutorial about it please let me know. I would greatly appreciate it.

Failed Stacking.jpg

[ameerat42]

What sort of stacking do you mean? If you have a series of lightning shots you could not really "Stack" them in the usual sense.
It appears that you have produced a panorama here. Do you mean you are looking for a panorama program?
Am.

[Redback200]

I mean that there are several shots of lightning striking different points where the camera didn't move. I want to put all the lightning strikes one on top of each other to get the number of lightning strikes in the original post. But the problem with that image up there is that there seems to be some white out or changed colours in the bolt of some of the lightning strikes which weren't there in the separate images. Below is an example of one of the single images from the camera.
IMG_6094.jpg



I hope that makes sense.

Thanks for your help.

[ameerat42]

I see. Well, the first image seems to have worked at least for the stacking.

There are two free programs that you cold try: Registax and CZM. (Look up Combine ZM.)
They may not be as user friendly as CS6 but I have used especially CZM a lot.
(Actually Registax is confusing, even after a few goes with it, but it is supposed to be "very good")
Am.

[hakka]

Use file>scripts>load files into stack and the set the blend modes to lighten. If you need to align them select all layers edit>auto align layers.