Help with my ccd imaging please

[noideasteve]

Hey guys, I've done a bit of astrophotography using dslr and cooled ccd one shot colors. I've decided to sell my OSC and purchase a Atik 383L+ along with a Orion Nortilus filter wheel and astronmik LRGB filters. The weather hasn't been the best here however when I stack my images they don't seem to come out in color. I'm sure there is something I'm doing wrong here! How many RGB images do I need to take to start obtaining color in my images? They are all looking grey. They are all 3 x 300 second exposures in LRGB. I'm trying to practice now in poor conditions so when I do get good conditions the night won't be ruined with trial and error.

So this is what I'm doing. Stacking all my LRGB files in deep sky stacker then importing the file into photoshop. I have tried stacking all the images individually into there own L,R,G,B to import into photoshop and paste them into their specific color channels but they all come up as being grey.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated... thank you. Also sorry for the explanations as I'm very tired being up most of the night trying things out with my new camera. Although I'm not getting color images I am finding the amount of detail I'm getting is excellent.

[pipnina]

Hey guys, I've done a bit of astrophotography using dslr and cooled ccd one shot colors. I've decided to sell my OSC and purchase a Atik 383L+ along with a Orion Nortilus filter wheel and astronmik LRGB filters. The weather hasn't been the best here however when I stack my images they don't seem to come out in color. I'm sure there is something I'm doing wrong here! How many RGB images do I need to take to start obtaining color in my images? They are all looking grey. They are all 3 x 300 second exposures in LRGB. I'm trying to practice now in poor conditions so when I do get good conditions the night won't be ruined with trial and error.

So this is what I'm doing. Stacking all my LRGB files in deep sky stacker then importing the file into photoshop. I have tried stacking all the images individually into there own L,R,G,B to import into photoshop and paste them into their specific color channels but they all come up as being grey.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated... thank you. Also sorry for the explanations as I'm very tired being up most of the night trying things out with my new camera. Although I'm not getting color images I am finding the amount of detail I'm getting is excellent.

I think the three different coloured images need to be stacked and edited seperately to the luminance stack. Then you'd need to create 3 layers on top of the stacked luminance frame and put your R,G and B on those, then make the R red by eliminating the stored blue and green channel from it and the same for G and B. Then you'd need to make the layers transparent to have the colour show up over the luminance.

At least, that's how I'd attempt to do it. But I do think that just combining four greyscale images won't make them coloured, even if each one does represent a different part of visible light.

[Skipper Billy]

I found this very useful.......

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/20447-lrgb-imaging-primer/

[noideasteve]

thanks guys, I shall give it a try

[carastro]

It sounds like what you are doing is right, but maybe there is a bit of the puzzle you are doing wrong:

Take a look at this tutorial, it should explain it quite clearly:

http://www.eprisephoto.com/videofiles/h1b3af346#h1b3af346

Carole 

[ollypenrice]

To be honest I think you'd do far better to move to a stacking and calibrating programme like Astro Art 5. It is much faster than DSS and more controllable - or, at least, more easily and transparently controllable. It has filters in the stacking stage which are ideal for making the Kodak chip results cleaner. It's so fast that, if you fancy trying a slightly different set of stacking parameters, you just do it. Even a set of 30 full format images only takes seconds to turn into a stack. It also allows you to align and combine R and G and B into colour and to experiment easily with different weightings.

I would always process my RGB and my luminance separately. They have entirely different processing priorities. The RGB just needs to be low in noise and strong in colour saturation. It doesn't need to be sharp or particularly contrasty. The luminance does need both sharpness and high contrast. I combine the L in Ps by pasting it onto the colour as a Layer set to Luminosity. This allows you to adjust both the opacity of the luminance and the colour saturation while seeing how they are playing together. It would be a shame just to let the software dump in the luminance without giving you control.

Olly

[noideasteve]

thank you so much everyone. That video was exactly what I needed... Thank you Carole, I'm really happy with my first result and learning curve to LRGB imaging and I'm loving it! I was very doubtful at first but the amount of detail you can achieve is fantastic.... I thought I was hooked before, this has just taken it to a whole new level! 
The next thing for me to do is work out a better way to align my images and that's where I'll look into the program you suggested Olly.

[noideasteve]

So this is my first image, I need to work on the alignment side of things when combining all the images together in Photoshop. Any final advice would be great.... also I didn't use any calibration frames either for my first attempt using a new method of imaging. 

[carastro]

Yes aligning (registering) the various filters is another hurdle.  After trying several softwares the one I find works a treat and I know Olly swears by this too, is Registar.  It's over £100 but worth it's weight in gold.  You can even register images done with different cameras, different scopes and also re-size and align your binned data with it.  Just make sure the subs are flipped the same way and it will work like magic, and you can also ask it to crop the images so you don't even need to slide them to line up the stars.  

Carole 

[StevieO]

It sounds like what you are doing is right, but maybe there is a bit of the puzzle you are doing wrong:

Take a look at this tutorial, it should explain it quite clearly:

http://www.eprisephoto.com/videofiles/h1b3af346#h1b3af346

Carole 

Wow, Anna Morris's videos on basic image processing are the best I've seen. Her way of doing levels and curves is now my way, and I'm currently revisiting a lot of my previous images to bring out more detail. I'd recommend these videos to anyone starting out.

Thanks for posting the link, Carole

StevieO