question about the primers

[allcart]

lots of really good primers to help me with my first astro pics, but one question keeps coming back to me.

I now have large batches of raw files to process. My normal workflow is to do basic corrections to colour temp, exposure etc and convert to Tiff. All other pp work is in CS5.

Do you do any basic editing to the individual Tiff files before you stack them with your chosen software, or do you stack first and just edit the resulting final picture.

[JamesF]

I usually have a scan through and throw out any where there's a clear problem. Otherwise it's stack first, process afterwards for me.

James

[RikM]

I always shoot RAW files and load these directly into Deep Sky Stacker together with calibration files (darks, flats, bias).. I take a quick look through all the light frames (on the preview screen) and deselect any that show obvious problems like cloud or major trailing, then calibrate and stack and save the resulting file as a 16bit tiff with settings embedded but not applied. I then open the tiff in Photoshop and do all the heavy lifting there.

[allcart]

Thats helpful to know Rik.

So I don't have to convert the raws first, so all the info remains in the files until the final conversion to tiff. (makes sense)

And I don't have to use consecutive frames, just the best ones and the darks. (even better)

And thanks James.

[Ant]

Take whatever format files that you have (fits from a CCD or RAW files from dSLR or even the JPGs from a dSLR). The first thing to do is put them through DSS and stack them. Put all of them into DSS, DSS will discard the poorer quality ones.

You'll end up with a single TIF file - this is what you process in Photoshop / GIMP.

Cheers

Ant