Jpeg or RAW

[Guest]

Just a quick question. What is the preferred picture file format for images for input to a stacker programme? My camera will produce jpeg (high or low compression) or RAW. Normally I use jpeg with low compression.

Cheers

Steve

 

[hitmanh]

RAW if your software supports your camera RAW, otherwise convert to tiff/dng then use that.

[Cornelius Varley]

Always use RAW files. The jpeg image has already has some processing done to it by the camera and valuable data removed. 

[wornish]

As others have said shoot raw and if your stacking software supports your particular camera use the raw files as the input.  If it doesn't support it convert to 16 bit tifs, not 8 bit

[Guest]

Excellent, thanks everyone.

 

[Marky1973]

Unless you fancy doing some star trail imaging - I found out the hard way that the 300 RAW images I took didn't work in either of the Star Trail stacking programmes I had downloaded! :-)

But otherwise, RAW seems to work for most stuff!

[hitmanh]

8 hours ago, Marky1973 said:

Unless you fancy doing some star trail imaging - I found out the hard way that the 300 RAW images I took didn't work in either of the Star Trail stacking programmes I had downloaded! :-)

But otherwise, RAW seems to work for most stuff!

RAW isn't the only option, neither of my cameras RAW is supported in DSS, so I convert to DNG or 16 bit TIFF then use those files for stacking, works a treat.

For my Panasonic GH3 I use Adobes DNG converter app, for my Fuji X-pro1 I use Fuji's raw converter app (which is based on Silkypix).