Resizing Raw Files?

[Dubbs75]

Hi Guys,

I've a small problem I hope one of you can help me with.

I'm working on my first real imaging project - the Orion Nebula, and its all going quite well (apart from the cloudy nights we've had these past few nights). The problem I have is when I'm stacking the images in DSS I always end up with the message "Out of Memory". So I went out and brought more memory for the laptop (went from 3Gb to 6Gb), and tried again last night. Same thing happened.

Whilst I know I can use my Cannon DSLR software to reduce the size of the image as a batch of files, it also seems to force you to save as JPGs which obviously I dont want.

Can anyone recommend a different piece of software to resize the RAW files? I dont have PS, but I downloaded GIMP for the image processing.

Cheers guys

Craig

[Cornelius Varley]

Make sure you don't have drizzle set to on in DSS.

Peter

[rfdesigner]

press SHIFT+CNTL+ESCAPE to get up the task manager, list the programs by memory size.. if there's something there hogging memory that you don't need then close it before stacking.

[Photosbykev]

The Canon software i.e. DPP, will allow you to batch save as 16bit Tiff files

[jgs001]

I'm with Peter, you've got drizzle enabled in the DSS stacking options. Disable drizzle and you should be fine.

[Dubbs75]

Your right, I remember ticking drizzle x2 on the last session I did just to check what the option did. Thanks guys, I'll give it a go and I'm sure the resulting image will show up on here shortly

[Stephen]

Drizzle is a mad thing, it doesn't matter what spec computer I run it on, it only seems to process the image with it enabled about 4% of the time

[rfdesigner]

Odd

when I've played dizzle games in IRIS I get no problems what so ever.. I think it must save things to disk far more.

I've also doubled the dimentions of 8Mpixel images (32Mpix resized images) and been able to stack those.

Derek

[jgs001]

You can use the drizzle, but for an SLR image at least, you need to define the ROI before processing. Click on a single light frame in the file list, click the red box on the lower right of the image preview, and draw the box on the image to define the ROI. When you do this, it'll work. Drizzle x2, uses 4 times the memory of a normal stack, and drizzle x3 uses 9x.

[Gina]

That's interesting Been having the ultra slows with DSS too.

[RikM]

Yes, drizzle is fine for DSLR images if you drop a box around the target rather than trying to drizzle the whole image.

[martin_h]

No matter how much memory you have in your computer, DSS is 32bit and will only use upto 4gb.

They say they are working on a 64bit version...but thats been a while now.

[Dubbs75]

Took drizzle x2 off last night and processed the pictures no problem. Having said that the result wasnt quite what I expected so theres a few hours of post-processing to work on later lol

[Gina]

If got DSS working a bit faster but still can't seem to get anything useful out of it.

[Dubbs75]

Daft question Gina but have you altered any of the settings once DSS has finished stacking?

[Gina]

Daft question Gina but have you altered any of the settings once DSS has finished stacking?

Yes, I improved things a bit that way but I believe the main problem is poor subs to start with. I'm hunting out my problems and have a strategy for improving things.

Basically two main problems with those subs - poor focus and bad tracking. I have tightened up my Crayford focuser so I'll see if that improves focussing - I believe the draw tube slipped as I was taking the subs. Secondly, I've been boning up on drift alignment for improving my PA.

When funds permit I intend buying a SteelTrack focuser because even having tightened the Crayford there is still a bad bit where I've been continually refocussing with my DSLR hung on the end. I'm also looking into guiding but not finding any stars with my webcam setup so planning to buy a QHY5 guide camera.