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Image processing practice.


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Hi All,

This may be a bit of a long shot but does anyone know of a site where I can download a series of lights, darks, flats etc. in order to practice processing? The nights are still too light to get decent images here, so I thought I'd use the next few weeks to get to grips with Deep Sky Stacker, Registax and Photoshop/The Gimp.  Any object would do, even a nondescript star field (preferably with a bit of light pollution to give practice at processing out).

Anyone feeling generous? :-)

Neil.

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This is actually a great thing, I'm also keen on practice, and having an image that you know can achieve a result and you work your way towards it, helps even more.

+1

I really need help in this dep also

:)

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I will happily share some of my DSLR capture data. It won't be amazing, but it will give you something to play with. Have a look at my flickr page (link in my sig) and let me know which of those targets you would be interested in. Some of the earlier targets probably don't have flats, so just check the details to see.

Cheers.

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Gav, that's excellent - I'll take a look. The target is of less interest to me than having any image with a load of subs etc that I can play with to get the same result that you have.  I have found, very early on, that the processing is more challenging than taking the images!

I'll let you know.

Neil (Cardiff).

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Neil - that is so true, while you can't polish a [removed word] with good results, data can be turned into a fantastic rather than average image by good processing. Let me know which target you would like and I will package it up and put it onto dropbox.

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Gav, all I can say is - wow! First time I've seen your stuff, Andromeda looks amazing. Do you have loads of capture data for this? I've heard that M31 can be a difficult one to process so that may be a good one to practice on.

You have my word as a Scholar and a Gentleman :grin: that I will not abuse your generosity by claiming these as my own, republishing, etc, I just need something to practice with.

Neil.

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Thank you.

M31 was pretty much the first target I worked on, though the image there is the third attempt at capturing the data! I have a feeling that it won't have any flats, but I will certainly send you the lights and darks.

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Neil, I've just packaged it up and it's over 1GB of data...! I have to leave for work right now, so will upload it tonight / tomorrow when I have time connected to the network. Will drop you the link once it's there.

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Neil, I've just packaged it up and it's over 1GB of data...! I have to leave for work right now, so will upload it tonight / tomorrow when I have time connected to the network. Will drop you the link once it's there.

Yep, each of my projects is over 1GB including darks, flats, and Bias frames. Although I have not tried compressing it to see what that would work out at.

ChrisH

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Good post. I hardly have time to scratch my neck at the moment but I'm keen on putting together some nice clean, decent quality data sets and making them readily available for folks to try. I really will do my best to make this happen, perhaps this winter.

Olly

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I've finally put the files on dropbox for you. Here's the link:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9rv0uji3dxggeg0/AADPHEkcLTPIxqIuuT0aiY3ia

Please let me know when you have downloaded everything. Sorry, no flats in this early days project! Also, I have just put the bias master on as 201 raw files was going to take a light year to upload!

Good luck with it and I look forward to hearing / seeing how you get on.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi Gav,

Once again, thank you for the RAW data. I have been having a go at processing this today without much success. I can clearly see the RAW images (and, to be honest, I'd be proud of any one of them without any processing!), but when I use Deep Sky Stacker to register and stack the files all I end up with is a virtually black vertical strip for an image, with what looks like random dots over it.  Can you tell what processing software you use?

Cheers,

Neil.

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Once you have stacked everything, you will have a dark image with lots of dots on it (the stars!). You need to save that as a .tiff file and take it into an image processing package. I use Photoshop. There you start the dark art of stretching, sharpening, fiddling with the colour etc. etc.

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Hi Gav,

The problem is that when I stack the images the TIFF produced only seems to be a small part of the image, and is rotated 90 degrees. I can work on the image produced, and, as you say, I can bring out a lot of detail.  Can you tell me know what stacking sofware you use? I am using Deep Sky Stacker - could it be that the images are too large for my laptop to handle?

Neil.

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Mmm, strange. I use Nebulosity on a Mac, so can't help with DSS I'm afraid. It should work absolutely fine and I can't imagine that the files are too large - they're only from a regular DSLR. There must be a simpler answer and is bound to be something to do with settings in DSS.

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Graham - thanks for that, I was running 332, I've updated to 334 and all appears ok. I have tried a quick test just stacking two subs and I now get the full image, so I'll try a full run later.

Gav, thanks for the intro to Nebulosity, I will buy that soon and give it a go.

Cheers,

Neil.

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