Narrow histogram

[Kirscovitch]

After stacking my images in DSS and then opening them in GIMP, my histograms always seem so narrow and processing the images is downright tricky if not impossible. Almost like there is hardly any data in the images. 

Is it because I usually keep an imaging session to an hour or so? 

Or when imaging I try to keep the ISO lower to reduce the amount of LP flooding my RAW images? Usually I shoot around 800ISO. Should I crank it up to 1600 and hope to edit out the LP later on?   

[dph1nm]

As GIMP only works in 8 bit you need to do some processing in DSS before you import into GIMP, otherwise most of the data will get scaled away in the conversion. I always use the sliders in DSS to get a reasonable looking image, then save (as 16bit tiff) with these applied. If you do this then you should be able to adjust things in GIMP quite happily.

NigelM

[Kirscovitch]

Thanks for the advice. I usually just save it as the 16 bit TIFF without using the sliders in DSS. I will try playing with it in DSS first next time. Also a photographer buddy of mine keeps insisting on getting Lightroom and he will show me how to use it. Anyone know how good lightroom is for AP processing? I don't want to drop the money on it if there is something better out there.

[red dwalf]

i don`t know about lightroom but many people use photoshop, no real need to go above version CS3 as it has all you need for astro images, there are also alot of plugins that can be freely downloaded or bought such as Noel`s actions and others