Median stacking. Say no to snowfall!

Sometimes you really want to remove unnecessary things from a shot – moving people, falling snow or excessive noise. There are a few ways to do this – using a neutral gray filter and slow shutter speed, creating a series of frames and merging them, and working with masks. But now I will tell you about the semiautomatic method, which allows you to keep all the still and remove all moving objects.

Nikon D850, Af-s Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8G ED f/7.1 1/40 sec, ISO 320

Original shot. As you can see, there is quite a bit of falling snow. Some people might like it, but I think it’s too much in this shot. It would take a long time to get rid of those dots and streaks by hand.

First let’s do a series of exactly the same shots. It’s better to do this series with a tripod, but if you’re sure of your hand strength, you can set the burst mode and do the necessary series with your hands. This is exactly what I did in this case.

I really liked the scene, it was very graphic and delicate. But I would like to get rid of the falling snow, or at least reduce the number of these whitish strokes in the frame. For this I decided to use the median stacking method and did a sequence of seven frames of the same type.

Next, I opened all the frames in Adobe Camera RAW and processed them exactly the same. The next step is to open all the files as layers of a single file in Photoshop. From Adobe Bridge this is done from the menu Tools – Photoshop – Load files into Photoshop layers.

Loading the files as layers of the same document in Photoshop

When all the layers are loaded, we need to align them. Select all the layers and go to the menu Edit – Auto-Align Layers, select the automatic method. When the program finishes, select all the layers again, right-click on the layer names and choose ConverttoSmart-Object to combine all the layers into a smart object.

The last step is to change the method of superimposing layers inside of the smart object to Median. To do this, go to Layers – Smart-Objects – Stack Mode – Median. Notice how much the texture of the falling snow has changed as a result.

This method has its significant disadvantages. So, if you have running water in the frame, median stacking will destroy its texture. And if there was even a slight breeze moving the treetops when this shot was taken, they would have turned into a haze in the final shot. And, nevertheless, for those cases when you need to quickly and efficiently clean excessive moving objects from a stationary environment, the method will give excellent results.