Digital SLRs often have high ISO ratings for taking indoor photos.
The ornate and decorated interiors of churches make great photographs but the lighting in a church is usually subdued or dark. That translates into a long shutter speed on your digital camera and camera shake unless you can use a tripod. Many churches ban the use of tripods and the alternative of boosting the "film speed" or ISO rating in your digital camera results in a very poor image with noise and random colored dots in any dark areas. Taking multiple images in quick succession and averaging the results is a simple way of reducing the noise.
Instructions
1. Set the ISO rating in the camera to its highest setting. If available, set the camera to take multiple images with one press of the shutter. Frame your picture and set your camera aperture so that the shutter speed is above 1/30 second.
2. Breathe slowly and depress the shutter button. Take at least three identical images without moving.
3. Open all three images in Photoshop. Select one as the base image and, holding the shift key, drag the thumbnails of the two remaining images as layers on top of that image. The shift key ensures that the images are reasonably aligned. Select all layers in the Layers tab by CTRL-clicking each one. Click "Edit: Auto Align Layers" and select "Auto" in the pop-up window. Click "OK."
4. Right click on one of the selected layers and choose "Convert to Smart Object." All layers will be absorbed into one Smart Object. Click "Layer: Smart Objects: Stack Mode: Median."
5. Zoom into the image and you find that you have a sharp photograph with minimal noise. The Median mode includes pixels that are common across most of the layers of the image which includes the items in the church but ignores the noisy pixels that vary from frame to frame.
Tags: digital camera, multiple images, pixels that, shutter speed, Smart Object, your digital
