dazza1639

To make the process a little clearer I have recorded a quick video showing how I combine mono images to create a colour image using Affinity Photo.

https://youtu.be/MBZ5W5YKVg4

The images in this video are just single 5 minute subs taken with Red, Green & Blue filters, that have been aligned using Astro Pixel Processor and saved as Tiff files.

I hope it helps.

The method I use is to paste each of my mono images into a new document as a layer, then use the colour channel adjustment layer on each of the new layers to colour them as either red, green or blue. I have set up presets for each colour to make it quick and easy. Then you just set the blend mode to add for each of the layers. This produces a colour image, if you then create a stamp layer that combines all the visible layers (ctrl, alt, shift & E) this creates a colour layer that you can further process. A good video to watch about colour is 

this explains splitting a colour image into each channel and recombining as used in my method.  
this video explains how to user the colour channel mixer

I had another go at processing the Horsehead from the same dodgy data. Is it an improvement?

Darren

Due to the bad weather and having no new data to play with, I have dug out some of my early astro imaging efforts. I wasn't expecting much as the source data is really bad. The RGB data was taken with an stick Canon EOS 1000d through my C8 with a 0.63 FR. Now the focal reducer I used at the time was one of the dodgy Chinese knock offs that means that the back focus was all wrong creating misshaped stars towards the edges and really bad vignetting, most of which has been cropped out because of the size of my Ha data.

The Ha data was my first every attempt at Ha when I first got my AtikOne 6.0. So the Ha data has issues as well. The Ha was taken using the same scope and focal reducer set up as above, so is suffering from the same issues as the RGB. But it also has the additional problem of being slightly out of focus, so some stars are little donuts.

From the above, you would think why bother, so did I, but I really wanted to try some new techniques and try to combine data from different sources and image scales. I am just starting to get used to Astro Pixel Processor, Starnet++ and Affinity Photo so thought that this would be a real test. It was, I stacked the Ha & RGB files in APP so that the resulting files where same size and orientation, I also used the batch crop and rotate tools to get the framing I wanted, and to cut out as much of the crud as possible. I also used the background / light pollution removal tools before moving the two files (RGB & Ha), on to Starnet++ where I created starless versions of each. I then did the rest of the processing in Affinity Photo.

Its not the best image I have ever produced, but from such bad data I am quite pleased. I suppose the moral of the story is never throw away any data, however bad.

Thanks

Darren

This was from my last imaging session of 2020, The Monkey Head Nebula taken on Christmas Eve.

On 26/12/2020 at 21:31, redfox1971 said:

Great image i did the same target with ha and 03 but when combined in pixinsight I'm struggling to get much blue,what camera,exposures lengths did you use?.

20x5min of Ha OIII & SII USING AN Atikone 6.0 through an Equinox 80 pro with a televiewers TRF2008 0.8x focal reducer. In Astro Pixel Processor I applied a 3x factor to both OIII & SII when combining the channels. I then used selective colour adjustments to balance the colours 

On 26/12/2020 at 20:14, Allinthehead said:

Nice one, the Monkey head has some interesting structures. Did you process in Pixinsight?

No stacked and preprocessed in Astro Pixel Processor and finished off in Affinity Photo

Nice  

Nice set of images 

Christmas Eve I managed to get 5 hours on NGC2175 the Monkey Head nebula 

What an image absolutely stunning  

Nice  

2020 hasn’t been a great year for anyone, but we’ve had a good comet, and some clear nights. I haven’t been the most productive, or even a very good imager this year, but I’m quite pleased with what I’ve learnt, narrowband has been a revelation . So I thought I would share a few of my images, and a video I put together or them. Thanks for all the great images and tips that have been posted. Wishing you all a happy Christmas and a great 2021.

Darren

You can minimise stars in exactly the same way as you do in photoshop, but the filter is called minimum blur under blur in the filter menu.

I have the Baader LRGB set all parafocal and have done me proud. I also have the Baader 7nm SII, Ha & OIII filters again parafocal and performing well.

Thanks Bryan, Affinity Photo is a photoshop like program from Serif, its only £48 as apposed to £9.99 per month for photoshop.

I have recently made the move from a copy of photoshop CS2 to Affinity Photo. I am glad that I did, it has given me the push to try and get to grips with mono imaging in narrowband. Here are a couple of recent images taken with my Atik One 6.0 with baader 7nm HA & OIII filters, through my Equinox 80 pro scope anf Televe TRF2008 0.8x reducer flattener. These are my first go at HOO, and I struggled a bit with how to combine channels in Affinity, it's not as straight forward as pasing the mono images into each channel like photoshop, but once I got the hang of the new workflow and the differences with masks, I think I prefer it.

Darren

Just a quick update.

Just before Christmas I received a ZWO EAF, thanks FLO. I installed it on my Equinox 80 over the christmas period and all went well, apart from the flexible coupling catching the focus knob housing causing the EAF to beep and stop moving. Once I made some adjustments and changed the coupling it is now working fully controlled by Ekos through my Stellarmate. Unfortunately due to the terrible weather we had in Manchester I haven't been able to test it on the stars with the Ekos focus routine, but as I can manually control the unit through Ekos I'm sure this will not be an issue.

So for anyone wanting to use an EAF with a Stellarmate unit or as in my case a RPi4 running Stellarmate OS I can confirm that it works.

Regards

Darren

that's really nice.

Wow 46 hours, I don't think I've had 46 hours of clear dark skies this year. Amazing image.

stunning. such a simple image but really quite beautiful.

On 05/11/2019 at 01:21, joer13167 said:

Here’s what I did to get  this working.

 

Either hook up a monitor and kb to the Stellarmate or go to http://stellarmate.local:6080/vnc.html and replace stellaremate.local with the IP of your Stellarmate.

On the desktop you will see the software updater. Double click to run that.

After thats done go back to the desktop open a terminal window  and run

sudo apt-get y install indi-bin

 

Finally, open http://stellarmate.local:8624 to open the web manager. Select your profile then go to drivers. Scroll to focusers and ensure ASI EAF is checked.

 

If you reboot the driver will load. You can see this in the web manager.

Works perfectly with ekos

Sorry I didn't see your reply. Thanks for the tip. I am getting quite confused with this now. I have messaged Jasem through the chat window on the StellarMate website, he confirmed that it would work, however, I also emailed ZWO at info@zwoptical.com who replied that it wasn't compatible. Who do I believe? 

Regards

Darren

Cheers I had seen that. I was after a bit of feedback. It doesn’t look like anyone has give this combination a go.

Darren

Minor success last night, once I sorted out the camera issue, connecting manually one device at a time starting with the AtikOne seems like a winner. I managed 20 subs in Ha and 10 subs in OIII on M27 before my neighbours conifer got in the way, by which time I needed to go to bed because we only ever get clear nights when I have to go to work.

I have had another good look around, and found some info on the ZWO website saying that there are INDI drivers for the ZWO equipment but it doesn't mention the EAF, so I'm a bit stuck still.