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PLEASE HELP!!! Image stacking on Mac?!?

Costas Soler

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Costas Soler

Costas Soler

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Hi! 

I have  MacBook Pro, and I am pretty stumped on how to stack my deep sky photos. I hope to be able to do this on a free app. I have successfully downloaded and installed Regim and RegiStax, and Startstax. As for Regim, I cannot seem to find a way to align the frames in an image. In the case of RegiStax, I am  unsure about how to do this using individual ptographic frames, rather than frames on an avi file. I am also not sure as to how I can set up align points on objects that are not planets. Now, Starstax is typically used for generating star trails, but I figured i'd try to stack deep sky images. Unfortunately, however, I am unable (or more likely just flat out too unskilled) to discover a way to align images in that program as well. I would like to ru Deep Sky Stacker on my MacBook, but I have yet to find any means to do this. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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Owmuchonomy

Owmuchonomy

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I am Mac through and through. The only way I can successfully stack DSO subs is to use DSS on my daughters PC. The only thing I haven't tried is to run Nebulosity. This software runs natively on a Mac but it's not free.

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psamathe

psamathe

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4 hours ago, Owmuchonomy said:

I am Mac through and through. The only way I can successfully stack DSO subs is to use DSS on my daughters PC. The only thing I haven't tried is to run Nebulosity. This software runs natively on a Mac but it's not free.

Whilst Nebulosity is not free, it's not priced in the "high end" software.  You can download it and try it for free (unlimited, no registration, no time limits) the only constraint being that any images saved have diagonal lines put across them.  I thought a good evaluation method.

Ian

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Costas Soler

Costas Soler

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Haha! Thanks a lot! I just tried setting dos up on my grandpa's spare laptop running windows xp....waaaaaay too slow...so I was totally desperate, typed in Deep Sky Stacker Mac version, and found the exact site you put the link to! I actually had just copied the same link to my clipboard and was about to post it here, that's when i saw yours link! Well, I downloaded it, and it's starting up pretty well so far... I'm going to attempt stacking some photos from last night right now. I'll let you know how it works. Thanks a lot!

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bendiddley

bendiddley

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Hi. I had the same predicament as you a while back being a mac user. I hunted high and low for solutions, I tried various stacking programs but couldn't get my head around them, I really wanted to use DSS and eventually found DSS for mac which I eagerly downloaded. Unfortunately  it did not work very well for me at all, it was very buggy and unreliable. In the end I decided to buy a cheap copy of windows xp that I got on eBay and installed it onto my Mac mini using boot camp. My mac mini now boots up in windows xp each time and I run the PC DSS on that, it works perfectly. If dedicating a whole mac to windows isn't possible you can set it up so windows on a mac is run as an application like any other I think, I think you need the most recent version of windows to do this and would mean upgrading windows each time you upgraded your mac OS which could get expensive, I didn't do this as I was trying to save money and could only afford windows xp. Alternatively maybe buy a cheap PC laptop and run DSS from that, you could probably pick up one quite cheaply I reckon. Hope your mac DSS works but if not, maybe give this a go.

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uhb1966

uhb1966

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i personally use vmware+DSS, which is great, but has the disadvantage to shell out for both the windoze license and vmware. If the wine solution works for you, then by any means use it!

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freiform

freiform

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I use the same approach as uhb1966, Windows in vmware and bootcamp (the later requires no additional license for vmware). In fact, my whole capturing toolchain (EQmod, APT, AstroTortilla, etc.) runs on that system on my Macbook. Another alternative would be using VirtualBox, which is free. There's still the need for a Windows license, though. On occasion, I fiddle around with WINE but more often than not I find it's not worth the trouble. 

Sven

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cjdawson

cjdawson

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I've also gone the VMWare route for windows stuff on my MacBook Pro.  If money is an issue, check out virtual box, whilst it's not as feature rich, it's free and whilst I've never used it might be good enough to run DSS for you.

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Ouroboros

Ouroboros

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I successfully use DSS on my MacBook, but it comes at a cost.  I run Windows 7 on my Mac as virtual machine using the Parallels software.  It works well, in fact Windows runs better on my Mac than on any PC I've ever used. It works seemlessly with the Mac OS too because both run in parallel. It does seem a sledge hammer to crack a nut just to run one free application DSS. I went this way because I have some old Windows only software like Photoshop and dreamweaver, plus of course my astronomy software Backyard EOS, EQMOD, PHD2 etc.  

I understand there are some commercial packages for processing astro images that include stacking and work on a Mac. Sorry, others will be more familiar than I am on what is available. Not sure but I think Pixinsight might be one. 

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Brasspoodle

Brasspoodle

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I've started with Nebulosity and followed Astronomy Shed's video 

in regards to familiarizing myself with a workflow. Given all the hassle of trying to work around Windows I figured this is the simplest solution. I enjoyed trying it out first too and foun d it easy to grasp.

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Brasspoodle

Brasspoodle

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Astroplanner, Stellarium, SkySafari (on my iPad and iPhone), GIMP (free Photoshop like programme). The imaging I'm planning on (literally spent two nights on this!) is DSLR based, unguided, and basically without laptop. The image processing is what use the Mac for once I'm back indoors. If I have my Mac outside then it's usually in conjunction with my 12" Dob running Stellarium (finding stuff) and  Astroplanner (recording observations and working through lists of objects) although mostly now I use Skyfarai Pro for both these tasks on my iPhone 6 Plus. The other thing I use on my Mac outside is Gamma Adjust, which turns everything red. Hope that helps. The ONLY thing I wish I had Windows for would be OccultWatcher.

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