Help with Maxim Processing

[Static030]

Hey guys, I haven't been very active lately but have gotten out a couple of times this year. I'm pretty much a rookie so bare with me please. I'm having a problem processing with MaximDL. I'm shooting with a modified Canon 450D (raw) on a Skywatcher 80ED, on a Celestron CGEM and using a Autoguider.

Anyway, once I do my imagining I open them all up in the software, process and stack. Now first off my image is in black and white. So I monkey around with the stretch. I try and convert to colour and I can't seem to get it looking good??!! Now the other problem is, if I save the stacked image either in a tiff, of jpeg the image is blank - can't see a thing. If I save it in a fitts image, I can re-open it in Maxim but nothing else.

Any suggestions on how I can get the raw file to be in colour in the first place or how to save the image to tweek in another program?

Thanks for you help guys.

[steppenwolf]

The first thing you need to do is de-Bayer each subframe - this is a process that converts the coded image (which appears to be monochromatic) into an RGB image.

In MaxIm :- Color - Convert to Color. You may have to change the 'X' and 'Y' offsets and the colour percentages in the dialogue box to get the correct colours to appear.

After this, you can move on to stacking the subframes which will now be in glorious colour.

[Static030]

steppenwolf - thanks for that - I will give it a try tonight. Any suggestions on why it won't show up as a tiff or jpeg?

[Static030]

I did some searching on youtube - found a good vidoe showing some stuff I wasn't doing - will do this tonight, maybe I have a spectacular image and don't even know it yet

[steppenwolf]

if I save the stacked image either in a tiff, of jpeg the image is blank - can't see a thing.

Never save as a JPEG until all the processing is completed and you want a 'copy' for placing on a website! JPEG format is a 'lossy' format so it should be used with caution.

The reason that the TIFF appears to be blank is most likely because it has a high bit count of either 16 bit, 32 bit or IEEE Float. As well as saving the stacked data as a FITS file, you should also save a copy as a 16 bit TIF but first click on the stretch button in the save dialogue and set this to:-

Permanent Stretch - Linear

Input Range - Screen Stretch

Output Range - 16 bit

When you open this TIF file in software like 'PhotoShop', you will be able to see the data clearly. Alternatively, you could just save it as a 16 bit TIF without applying the stretch command, open it in PhotoShop (where it will appear blank) and then start stretching it iteratively using 'Levels' in PhotoShop - I prefer an iterative stretch to the much quicker 'Auto-levels' although the latter will confirm that there is indeed data there!