DSS star count

[happy-kat]

After reading often should image using RAW and not JPG I finally used RAW.

The location was very dark though the air was very wet and the Moon and 3/4 full but behind my back from where shooting. I couldn't see the Mily Way but this would have been the air quality only as I should have been able to see it. I shot casiopia as I hoped the final image would show the milky way.

I used my standard 1100d with a vintage 55mm lens at f3 for 5 seconds and took 32 lights and 7 darks.

DSS 3.2.2 finds 4256 stars on the JPGs and 955 when using DNG.

DSS beta needed for my 1100d RAW files only finds 116 stars.

Seems big differences.

The final stack files the JPGs show most promise this seems counter to expectations. All three output files are 71Mb.

I know I am very green at post processing it tends to follow a 'does it look better if I do this'.

[laser_jock99]

RAW is good!

[Leveye]

I stack at about 60-75 stars just to be sure it's not reading any pixels or noise

[Viewmaster]

On a similar theme, what does the DSS  score for each RAW sub loaded mean please?  

It's shown in the list of sub files loaded at the bottom of the DSS screen.

Sometimes its low at about 30 and sometimes high at a few thousand.

[lensman57]

After reading often should image using RAW and not JPG I finally used RAW.

The location was very dark though the air was very wet and the Moon and 3/4 full but behind my back from where shooting. I couldn't see the Mily Way but this would have been the air quality only as I should have been able to see it. I shot casiopia as I hoped the final image would show the milky way.

I used my standard 1100d with a vintage 55mm lens at f3 for 5 seconds and took 32 lights and 7 darks.

DSS 3.2.2 finds 4256 stars on the JPGs and 955 when using DNG.

DSS beta needed for my 1100d RAW files only finds 116 stars.

Seems big differences.

The final stack files the JPGs show most promise this seems counter to expectations. All three output files are 71Mb.

I know I am very green at post processing it tends to follow a 'does it look better if I do this'.

DSS is trying to separate hot pixels from stars. Stick to raw, jpeg has no place in AP. DSS only needs a minimum of 8 stars for registration so a "large star" count makes no difference whatsoever.

A.G

[m37]

The author has very kindly explained some of the processes here http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

Including the score!

[happy-kat]

Thank you all the replies, more reading to do