DSS post stack

[Anweniel]

Just aquick newbie question regarding the post stacking processing in DSS.

I have tended to align my RGB channels approx 1/3 along the steep part of the histogram and up the saturation to about 20% to regain a colour picture then saved this as my 'master stack'.

Having played a bit with different positions along the S-curve, leaving channels spread out, changing the angle of inclination (midtones/backgrounds/highlights...seems to complicate matters!) I have found that at first glance this appears to present a reasonable looking stack.

My question is : am I approaching this the right way? Should I be looking to align channels here or is it prefferable to wait until using dedicated processing software e.g PS? Am I clipping valuable data?

here is a couple of pics to demonstrate what I am doing.

Any help greatly appreciated and apologies if this is covered elsewhere

[Digz]

A great question and one that I have been wondering myself.

I pretty much do what you do albeit I will make the central part of the curve steeper, and maybe have everything shifted to the right more. But I dont know if thats right and I always struggle to get anything other than a grey mess out of DSS lately.

[Anweniel]

I will make the central part of the curve steeper

Presumably by increasing the inclination on the midtone?

[Bizibilder]

Having asked for the same advice whan starting out with DSS I now don't do any post processing with DSS. All your data is in the stacked image (saved as a 16bit TIFF) so you may as well go straight to PS and process it there. I do have "auto RGB align" (or similar name) checked - this just puts the RGB peaks in line and makes life a little easier.

[Digz]

Presumably by increasing the inclination on the midtone?

I think that's right.

Bizibilder - presumably the editing you do in PS is curves adjustment ie stretching? I haven't really tried that to what results I get.

[martin_h]

I never touch a thing in DSS, just save the TIFF as is and do the processing in something else.

[Jgw]

HI, Try looking at some tutorials

Astronomy Shed UK Astronomy Forum • View topic - Superb Processing Tutorial

Here you will find all you need to start with..

John

[RikM]

I never touch a thing in DSS, just save the TIFF as is and do the processing in something else.

Same here

I align the peaks and increase the saturation just to have a quick look at the preview, but I save the tiff with settings embedded but not applied and do the processing for real in Photoshop.