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1st Complete Image with New EQ5--Lots of Problems


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Hi,

I took my first complete image with my new EQ5 last night of the Orion Nebula, but I had loads of problems processing it. So first of all, I stacked using DSS, around 50 x 45 sec exposures at ISO 800, using an EOS1000d attached to my 130mm reflector. The image that came up at the end looked amazing (although, as always, it was black and white). So I saved and renamed the file in the proper place, and so on. Then I opened the stacked shot in GIMP. That was when things started going wrong. The picture was so dark, I could only see that core of the nebula, and when I did a stretch to find out what I had captured, the picture just went to shreds. It appeared I had only caught the middle of the nebula, and the outer regions were just an orange patch with no detail whatsoever. It looked Horrible :(.  I then went back into DSS, and tried to process the image using that. It came out beautiful, but still Black and White. So I decided to use GIMP to put the picture on top of last week's shot, which was in colour. The result is what you see; to me it looks ok.

So basically, I have a couple of questions.

1. Why does DSS make pictures B & W?

2. Why does GIMP ruin the pictures I put in it unless I have processed with DSS and thereby lost all colour?

3. Is the way I have added the colour acceptable?

4. Is this photo actually a disaster? I want to be honest with myself, but I just don't know what to think.

 

John

 

Processed.jpg

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When you stack in DSS the advice I was given was to open the autosaved image in the processing software and process it there. Don't use DSS for processing because it's a stacking software. When you open the image it will be very dark because it is linear data and hasn't been stretched yet. I suspect you just need to get better at processing (same as me) the image you have looks good. One thing I can see is it looks to me like your focuser is tilted slightly. The stars are good on the right and on the left they look smudged to the left, hope that helps a bit

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You will need to debayer the image in DSS to get the colour. Not used DSS for a while so can't remember where the debayer settings are but should be easy enough to find.

A bit of practice and GIMP will give better results than processing in DSS (not recomended, even by the person who created DSS)

Debayer in DSS and you will get the colour

It's a good start, keep it up.

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When you stack your image in DSS, you must make sure that the box that says "embed changes but do not apply" is checked, if it isn't then you will lose loads of the data, this is a must with DSS, you want the changes to be embedded in the data but not permanently changed, thismis why when you get the image to Gimp, and stretch it looks awful, and colourless, as a lot of the data has gone.

DSS is a great free programme, BUT you only want to use it for stacking and NOTHING else, don't try and do any processing adjustments at all with it. And make sure you are saving the file in the right format.. 

hipe that tip helps :)

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6 minutes ago, wxsatuser said:

DSS does'nt make it B&W, the colur is in there you need to get it out.

It will be dark you need to stretch it.

45secs is not very long, so don't expect to much, even on the Orion neb.

DSS can make it almost B&W if you don't check the "embed changes but do not apply" box... :)

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Here's the stacked image exported from DSS--Perhaps someone will be able to get it working :) 

I've tried processing some data from an old picture to make sure I'm doing it right, and I seem to be. But with this photo, there's just nothing there. Just a thought, GIMP is only 8-bit. Could I be losing loads of data because of that?

Stacked.TIF

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okay so all I have done is used pixinsight. the first thing I noticed is there seems to be quite a lot of what I think is rotation in the images which means I had to crop a huge amount of the image. I then calibrated the image and use DBE. that's all I have done so its not pretty. you do have quite a big bit of dust on the camera sensor so flats would help with that. this was just to show you how much is in there.

Stacked.jpg

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28 minutes ago, SkyBound said:

DSS can make it almost B&W if you don't check the "embed changes but do not apply" box... :)

It will be near colourless if you apply changes and don't boost the colour in DSS, boost colour by at least 25.

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I have found DSS capable of producing an image that is more than good enough to show whats in the stack just by using the sliders and other adjustments and saving as a 16 bit tiff with all settings applied, in fact on many occasions it has given me far better results than the autosave with post processing in PS.

Alan

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1 minute ago, Alien 13 said:

I have found DSS capable of producing an image that is more than good enough to show whats in the stack just by using the sliders and other adjustments and saving as a 16 bit tiff with all settings applied, in fact on many occasions it has given me far better results than the autosave with post processing in PS.

Alan

So is it allowed to do most of the processing in it? And then use that as a sort of luminance layer and add a colour processed version make it look nice? :) 

John

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6 minutes ago, JohnSadlerAstro said:

So is it allowed to do most of the processing in it? And then use that as a sort of luminance layer and add a colour processed version make it look nice? :) 

John

You can always save several versions, the autosave is the raw stack and from that you can do various experiments saving each as 16 bit tiffs, the colour will come out if you adjust the colour slider to about 25 as Mike has already said.

Alan

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If the images that you save in dss are actually bw and not just low on saturation, you can check that you have set the fits settings.

It does have to be set even for a raw dslr camera.

fitsddp.jpg

If you are using a canon camera, set the camera model to generic RGGB, and check the Monochrome 16bit fits files are raw files created by a dslr.

 

When I was using dss I uasualy did a initial stretch and rgb aligning.

More on the dss site's guide http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/userguide.htm

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When I started out I remember I found it easier to process the image in dss so I could see the nebula with some saturation, and then move on to gimp / ps. It might not be ideal in the long run, but to me at least it was a easier way to process images.

My standard process in dss was to align rgb (to some degree), move the histogram (peeks) in to the stretching curve, make the curve a little steeper, and saturate to ~19-21%

Looks something like this.

ProcessingTab.jpg

This usually ended in something that was easy to continue in gimp.

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