DS

[GenesAP]

First, hi to everyone. New to all this including this forum.

A couple of weeks ago using a Nikon D5300 I took my first ever photos of an object in space which happened to be the Andromeda Galaxy. I was thrilled to see stars and the swirling of the clouds. Opened DSS and opened the picture files, selected the raw files I wanted. (Nikon calls them nef files). DSS lets you preview the picture before registering or any processing. DSS only let me stack only one raw frame which was a little disappointing at the time but I've since learned is was probably because of the trailing stars and maybe the focus was not good enough  so no sweat, I'll just take some more with less exposure time and the use of a Bahtinov Mask for better focusing. Everything else remained the same including taking both jpeg and raw files but now in the very first step when I preview any one of the raw files the screen is black except for very faint green dots where the brighter stars are even with the light to dark slider at the top of the screen, all the way to the left . I've view the raw pictures using Windows and they appear like an unprocessed photo should. The jpeg pictures look the same. Can anyone tell me what's going on how to fix this. Again, raw file looks good in Windows but not in DSS. it's virtually black and unworkable.

[Galen Gilmore]

DSS shows all pictures darker than they should be. You should not be processing the image in DSS, instead download a free processing program like GIMP. 

 

[wxsatuser]

Short AP RAW photos will tend to be very dark, nothing wrong with that.

When you view with an external viewer it will apply a curve to the RAW.
This happens regardless of wether the image is AP or a normal daylight photo.
It also does the same for the image on the camera LCD.

DSS is dealing with the RAW files and does'nt actually apply a curve.
If you look at the final Autosave tif it will be very dark as well, it's up to
you to apply a curve in your processing software, Gimp or Photoshop.

[newbie alert]

You can get a image from dss but you will have to play with the sliders..its best not to if you have a processing software such as Photoshop,pixinsight,startools etc..If not then before you stack you can select a light image..adjudt the top right slider to reveal the image and then stack..once stacked you can align the rgb sliders,and even add a bit of saturation but I'd suggest you don't do this if you have some form of processing software