Help with milkyway mosaic

[AstroLuke]

Hi everyone, i was just out ast night taking pictures of the milky way. From the pictures taken i tryed making a mosaic.

Apparently my photoshop cs4 cant handle the canon raw files so i have to cnvert the pictures. Converting them apparently makes the pictures quality worse.

So when i finaly finished the mosaic i could barely see the milkyway. The overall image quality was also quite bad. So im looking for some tips of how to create this mosaic without loosing data. Maybe you know some good programs?

I also found out that the quality and sharpness of the images is better when looking at the raw image files in the pprogram i got with the camera called "Digital photo professional" compared to for example picasa picture viewer.

I attached a link for the picture, i'd wish i could give you a link for the raw files but i dont know how to put hte files up on here.

prøve | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Regards

Lukas

[Psychobilly]

It might be worth looking at using Adobe DNG format - you can get a free convertor from Adobe...

Adobe - Adobe Camera Raw and DNG Converter : For Windows

Another option thats worth looking at is Microsoft ICE...

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ICE/

Peter...

[Neil McRae]

I agree with Peter Microsoft Ice has given me good results when stitching images together

Neil

[bamus]

Microsoft ICE - for me best panorama program ever!

[AstroLuke]

Can ICE use canon raw files?

[AstroLuke]

I just tryed with normal JPEG files but i just get an error that tells me i have to use images that fit together :S They do fit together :S

[bamus]

maybe you are usind different image sizes?

[blackparticle]

Apparently my photoshop cs4 cant handle the canon raw files so i have to cnvert the pictures.

I'm surprised at that. Have you tried installing the latest CameraRaw update? Adobe are usually quite good at keeping up with all the RAW formats.

Install Adobe Camera Raw 5.6 update

[Psychobilly]

I just tryed with normal JPEG files but i just get an error that tells me i have to use images that fit together :S They do fit together :S

There probably needs to be more "detail" for the two panels to be matched... and the gradients may not be helping... it might be worth tackling them first before "stitching"...

Having had another look at the image you linked.. try and get the level of the middle panel to be a closer match to those on either sides