The easiest star trails ever, using StarStaX. Here’s a very simple beginner’s guide for using StarStaX. Best of all, StarStaX is free!

Star trails over an abandoned Mission-style building, Mojave Desert.
Star trails over an abandoned Mission-style building, Mojave Desert.

What is StarStax?

StarStaX is free software that runs on Mac and Windows. They describe themselves quite well, so we’ll let them kick off the description.

StarStax is a fast multi-platform image stacking and blending software, which allows to merge a series of photos into a single image using different blending modes. It is developed primarily for Star Trail Photography where the relative motion of the stars in consecutive images creates structures looking like star trails.

StarStaX

Is it easy to use?

Yes, it’s much easier than Photoshop CC, in my opinion, which in turn isn’t really that difficult either.

Three easy steps to star trails in StarStaX!

1. Load your files

Yes, it’s that easy. Just sweep your files into StarStaX on the left side. After you do so, you can even uncheck any photo that you don’t want. The software has excellent default preferences, so for this example, we’ll use those.

Loading files you wish to stack into StarStax.
Loading files you wish to stack into StarStax.

2. Process the photos in StarStaX

Simply hit “Process”. You can select this by going to “Edit” on the top menu and selecting “Start Processing” or by using a keyprompt. For Mac, the keyprompt is “Command” + “P”. A photo with star trails will appear rather quickly.

After pressing "Command"+"P" (Mac) for "Process", StarStaX will automatically stack the photos. The defaults work well.
After pressing “Command” + “P” (Mac) for “Process”, the software will automatically stack the photos. The defaults work well.

3. Save your photo in StarStaX

It’s that easy.

You can save the results in StarStax by pressing "Command" + "S" for "Save".
You can save the results by pressing “Command” + “S” for “Save”.
The image will automatically save as a JPG. Want a TIFF file instead? Simply change the ".JPG" at the end to ".TIF".
The image will automatically save as a JPEG. Want a TIFF file instead? Simply change the “.JPG” at the end to “.TIF”. Simple!

Going deeper with StarStaX

Amazing sculptures of Borrego Springs underneath the starry desert sky at night.

StarStaX allows you to do other things. And best of all, it makes it easy to experiment and create. You can choose Gap Filling, which is the default.

Experiment with the various Blending Modes. You may find these in the pulldown menu. See what you prefer. Some of them dramatically change the appearance of your final image.

Comet Mode makes your star trails look like Comets, being thicker at the beginning and slowly tapering off. It’s very easy to use, although it does shorten your star trails a bit.

Cumulative Image Saving allows you to save each photo after each step. This is great for doing time-lapses in which the stars continually build up star trails, well, cumulatively.

Have fun and experiment. It’s all non-destructive, meaning that you can’t mess up your original photos.

StarStaX is available for download for Mac and Windows here.