Deep Sky Stacker treats colour pics as mono

[Breakintheclouds]

I seem to be having a curious issue. I'm using a nikon D40 shooting raw (or at least Nikon's NEF format, which is more or less the same thing). When I load the images into DSS, although it shows the little Bayer icon at the left of the image list, the 'depth' column says "Gray 16 bit" and the processed images come out monochromatic. Is there some setting I'm overlooking, or some other way of forcing it to recognize that the pics are colour?

I've got the Nikon NEF drivers installed in Windows. Also, when I right click on a file in the list and look at properties, it says gray in there too.

[Spikey]

I think it's the fact that they are stacked as RAW images. I'm having the same issue and am considering re-stacking now with jpg's to see what happens !

[Smeg]

Why not just convert to TIFF?

[Psychobilly]

Have you tried boosting the saturation on the stacked image in DSS before savign it with the changes applied... ?

Raw files are listed as greyscale in the file list in DSS - its not just a "Nikon" thing and are de-bayered to get the color info...

[JKB]

I had same problem and as Psychobilly says up the Saturation levels when stacking complete and I always shift the R G B levels up too (putting each on top of another)

HTH

Jamie

[Spikey]

Thats done the trick for me. Thankyou.

[Psychobilly]

Glad it's sorted it out for you...

Heres a few pic's of the process...

1 - the file list (just a couple of "lights") the preview image is "colour" and DSS says its "Grayscale"

2 - The Stacked image...

3 - Quickly dragged down the histogram - I used linked settings but you can then tweak them individually... captured part way through the "apply" stage...

4 - a Saturation boost - again captured part way through...

5 - the Save as dialogue with the Apply changes selection...

Peter...

[Spikey]

Thanks for taking the time to do that. It is much appreciated.

[Psychobilly]

NO worries ..

It didn't take long (well not with just 3 lights) and a picture is worth a thousand words...

[Breakintheclouds]

Psychobilly - that was really helpful for me too. In particular, the tip to boost the saturation before saving in DSS made a big difference.

[serpiente]

If you captured in nebulosity, try in edit, preferences, color file format and select rgb fit maxim. In DSS in the final image put in saturacion 15% for example and apply.

[Stub Mandrel]

Although the luminosity controls in DSS are very hard to use, I have recently found that twiddling them to get a good stretch of the data gives me much better results. this is because DSS uses 32 bit data and a 'pre-stretch' ensures you use as much of the bandwith of the 16 bit version as possible.

[noste99]

On 03/08/2016 at 12:41, serpiente said:

If you captured in nebulosity, try in edit, preferences, color file format and select rgb fit maxim. In DSS in the final image put in saturacion 15% for example and apply.

Hi,

Just discovered this discussion.

I took 30 frames of 60sec with EKOS (equipment control environment integrated in KStars under Linux). This tool contains a FITS viewer and this one shows me a color image as it comes out of my ZWO ASI 120MC camera.

Trying to stack the 30 frames in DSS I upload them as 8 bit Gray images. There is no Bayer icon beside the light icon in DSS at all. In my case I have only brightness and contrast controls but nothing as RGB controls.

Opening the same picture in JImage shows me also a gray image.

I have the impression there is an issue with the format (fits standard) read by DSS being interpreted differently.

A hint is very much appreciated!

Regards,

Stefan