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iMac Software - Image Stacking

Nikonman

By Nikonman
in Getting Started With Imaging

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Nikonman

Nikonman

Posted
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I think the title says it all. Is there any software out there for an iMac? Everything I seem to find is PC only and I really don't want have to return to the whacky (frustrating) world of Microsoft.

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cgarry

cgarry

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Thanks Chris & Paul. The answer to your question Chris is both. I'm starting with the planets but do want to move into deep sky.

As I understand it, deep sky imaging has more support on the Mac that planetary.  For deep sky imaging you have Nebulosity as Paul said, plus PixInsight and Photoshop.  You have to pay for all of them but Mac users do seem to be conditioned to expect this!

For planetary work, I am not so sure.  PIPP and RegiStax can run in Wine, but I am not sure what the situation is with planetary capture programs.  Hopefully a Mac user will who has tried this will be along at some point.

Cheers,

Chris

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Owmuchonomy

Owmuchonomy

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I'm a Mac user and the only true Mac software I've found for Mac is Lynkeos, a planetary system like Registax. I use my daughters PC for preparation and then move over to PS on my Mac.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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JamesF

JamesF

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Chris and I have exchanged a few emails about this already so it will come as no surprise to him, but I'm in a position where a Mac of some sort would be handy for some work I may take on.  If I do that, I'll be attempting to port oacapture to it.  Of course it remains to be seen which cameras will actually work on OSX.

James

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GuillermoBarrancos

GuillermoBarrancos

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As I understand it, deep sky imaging has more support on the Mac that planetary.  For deep sky imaging you have Nebulosity as Paul said, plus PixInsight and Photoshop.  You have to pay for all of them but Mac users do seem to be conditioned to expect this!

I fail to understand your logic here? On Windows you do not have to pay for Nebulosity, PixInsight and Photoshop? :rolleyes:

On Windows you might have free software like DeepSky Stacker, but it´s just stacking software. You still need to further process it in other software, which is all Paid for.

Nebulosity is fairly cheap and can be bought for $80. StarTools can be picked up for $60. These 2 together will basically provide you an entire suite of software from image capturing all the way to Post-Processing.

And all that together for less than a single PixInsight License.

So again. On Windows you might have a lot more Choice in software, but pretty much all the decent software is paid for and not free either!

Except when it comes to Planetary imaging. There you got a lot of good freeware. That is the exception.

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cgarry

cgarry

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LOL! I hope you are being sarcastic now. ;)

PS. All mentioned paid software has demo versions. So you can try them out for free for at least 30 to 45 days.

:grin:  Reading back my previous comment it does come across as a bit more harsh than intended!  I think it is too late to cancel my MacBook Pro now anyway, it arrives on Thursday.

I have found that starting the demo period on any astro software guarantees weeks of cloudy skies.  In fairness most things astro related guarantee cloudy skies.

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GuillermoBarrancos

GuillermoBarrancos

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I have a Retina MacBook Pro as well and love it. The screen is fantastic and so is the performance.

I went all out with CPU upgrade and 512GB SSD, so it will last me some years.

I run both OSX and Windows 8.1 via Bootcamp.

Have to for work anyway, as there isn't any decent RDP software on MacOSX.

Love both OS's. Both have it's strengths. Tho I must admit that lately I use only Windows and hardly boot in OSX anymore.

Might just format the OSX partition in near future and run Windows only.

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Owmuchonomy

Owmuchonomy

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Aaahhh... yes, us Iquipped folk are a bit passionate. But then we have lots of free time because we don't hang around while our OS goes on holiday for hours if recuperation. Ha ha.

Enjoy.

Chris

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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GuillermoBarrancos

GuillermoBarrancos

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Phew!!! didn't realise my question would raise so much passion. But thanks for all your input. I'm of to try out Nebulosity and Pixinsight on some test pics of Saturn.

Nahh.... you read too much into it! :grin:

And as has been said, if you find the software Choice too Limited on OSX, it´s very easy to create a dualboot Windows 8 / OSX system via Bootcamp.

It´s really not that hard to do and there are plenty of really good guides on the internet to help you through the process.

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cgarry

cgarry

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My new MacBook arrived today, 2 days early!  I have been working through the OS X learning curve which is fun, finding a proper command prompt was nice.

Back on topic, I have installed Wine and now have PIPP and AS!2 running perfectly.  So apart from the actual data capture, all of the planetary imaging processing can be done on a Mac.

Cheers,

Chris

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JamesF

JamesF

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My Mac should arrive tomorrow.  I'm "home alone" tomorrow and as the forecast was good I was planning a sneaky white light solar animation project, but as my motor focuser PSU has died I have to fix that first.  If I can't get it sorted sharpish then I'll probably abandon the idea for tomorrow and should have time to start finding my way around the Mac.

There is the grubby little matter of work to deal with, but I'm sure I can resolve that somehow.

James

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Owmuchonomy

Owmuchonomy

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I compare being Iquipped to falling into the imaging trap. You'll get hooked, then your family will get hooked, then your credit cards melt. My iPad mini comes today then I'll have a Royal flush of Istuff. Enjoy!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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  • 5 months later...
uhb1966

uhb1966

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I'd like to add that i use the sTOck EOS software for suckedremote controlling my Canon, Lynkeos for planetary. I tried DSS in Wine but the speed sucked. I am now running DSS in Virtualbox, a free virtual machine into which you can install all other operating systems. This has several advantages, the major one is that you can keep on working with other OS X software while DSS rumbles along.

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uhb1966

uhb1966

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Basically, such a VM environment allows you to run all windows based software, but its sometimes a pain in the back to get drivers working. Theres now even a very nice and fast plate solving software on OS X , basically a local installation of astrometry.net

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