Help analyze M81-M82 1x180s vs 37x180s

[Seanelly]

1 hour ago, Thalestris24 said:

I wouldn't bother trying to run Startools on a 32-bit Windows machine. I think you can get a 32-bit version of gimp and it's free and fine for basic processing - levels, curves etc.

Louise

Okay, thanks, I'l keep that in mind. I see a dedicated laptop in my future.

[Seanelly]

On 12/01/2019 at 11:45, Thalestris24 said:

I wouldn't bother trying to run Startools on a 32-bit Windows machine. I think you can get a 32-bit version of gimp and it's free and fine for basic processing - levels, curves etc.

Louise

Hi, Louise. I downloaded Gimp 2.10.8 32 bit, but I'm having no luck with it. I've uninstalled and installed several times, but it keeps crashing a few minutes into each TIFF image I've manipulated (several different ones), giving me fatal error messages. I thought this might have something to do with saving from DSS, but after restacking a few different image sessions and saving them completely unprocessed in TIFF format, both using selections of 'apply adjments to saved picture' and also 'embed adjustments to saved image but do not apply them' (which I understand is the correct way?), the results are the same. However, when I save unprocessed stacked images from DSS to JPEG files, I can use the program without any problems. Is there something you can pinpoint from my description that I may be doing wrong? It does say in Gimp that the program supports TIFF files, so I'm at a loss, as from what I understand it is always better to process TIFF files rather than JPEG?

[Thalestris24]

41 minutes ago, Seanelly said:

Hi, Louise. I downloaded Gimp 2.10.8 32 bit, but I'm having no luck with it. I've uninstalled and installed several times, but it keeps crashing a few minutes into each TIFF image I've manipulated (several different ones), giving me fatal error messages. I thought this might have something to do with saving from DSS, but after restacking a few different image sessions and saving them completely unprocessed in TIFF format, both using selections of 'apply adjments to saved picture' and also 'embed adjustments to saved image but do not apply them' (which I understand is the correct way?), the results are the same. However, when I save unprocessed stacked images from DSS to JPEG files, I can use the program without any problems. Is there something you can pinpoint from my description that I may be doing wrong? It does say in Gimp that the program supports TIFF files, so I'm at a loss, as from what I understand it is always better to process TIFF files rather than JPEG?

Hi

That's a shame - you may just be running into memory limits or maybe 32 bit gimp doesn't handle 32 bit tiffs. There's no point in uninstalling/reinstalling. You could try loading the tiff in dss (In the 'Processing' box select 'Open picture file') and saving it again but as a 16-bit tiff or 16-bit Fits format file (dss lets you select the format when you 'save picture to file', also under 'Processing').  The 16-bit file will be smaller

Louise

[Seanelly]

30 minutes ago, Thalestris24 said:

Hi

That's a shame - you may just be running into memory limits or maybe 32 bit gimp doesn't handle 32 bit tiffs. There's no point in uninstalling/reinstalling. You could try loading the tiff in dss (In the 'Processing' box select 'Open picture file') and saving it again but as a 16-bit tiff or 16-bit Fits format file (dss lets you select the format when you 'save picture to file', also under 'Processing').  The 16-bit file will be smaller

Louise

Memory space is not an issue, but I will try saving as a 16-bit tiff as you kindly suggest and see what happens. It is true, is it not, that processing tiff files are preferable to jpeg, even though they must be converted in the end to jpeg to upload to sites like SGL?

[Thalestris24]

8 hours ago, Seanelly said:

Memory space is not an issue, but I will try saving as a 16-bit tiff as you kindly suggest and see what happens. It is true, is it not, that processing tiff files are preferable to jpeg, even though they must be converted in the end to jpeg to upload to sites like SGL?

Hi

jpeg is only 8 bit so you don't want to do processing on jpegs - you want 32-bit or 16-bit minimum. Since you only have a 32-bit machine, I would stick to 16 bit files.

Louise

[Seanelly]

10 hours ago, Thalestris24 said:

Hi

jpeg is only 8 bit so you don't want to do processing on jpegs - you want 32-bit or 16-bit minimum. Since you only have a 32-bit machine, I would stick to 16 bit files.

Louise

I have now tried 16-bit files; still crashing. jpeg files do not crash, tiff files do. I have 130 gigs of memory space left on the C drive where gimp is installed, so this is baffling. I must look into acquiring another laptop to dedicate to my astrophoto pastime and install Windows 64-bit operating sysyem, but this could take as much as a couple of months. Is there another processing program you might recommend me to try in the meantime? The jpeg images I've messed with in gimp are far superior in results to the windows photo editor I was using, so I think pretty much any other you could think of would be better to get me over the next month or two.

[Thalestris24]

47 minutes ago, Seanelly said:

I have now tried 16-bit files; still crashing. jpeg files do not crash, tiff files do. I have 130 gigs of memory space left on the C drive where gimp is installed, so this is baffling. I must look into acquiring another laptop to dedicate to my astrophoto pastime and install Windows 64-bit operating sysyem, but this could take as much as a couple of months. Is there another processing program you might recommend me to try in the meantime? The jpeg images I've messed with in gimp are far superior in results to the windows photo editor I was using, so I think pretty much any other you could think of would be better to get me over the next month or two.

Have you tried 16 bit Fits files? They should be smaller. Check the size of the files you saved? The Autosave.tiff is always 32 bit, floating point so is big. When I said before about possible memory problems I was talking about dram memory, not drive storage. A 32 bit machine can only address 4Gb of which 2Gb is used by Windows. I don't know how much ram you have in your system? but it can't be more than 4Gb. There may be other packages out there... I use one called paint.net which is free but I don't think it handles 32 bit files but should be ok with 16-bit files.

Louise

Edit: I just checked on my system and Fits files aren't actually smaller but might be worth a try. What is the size (in Mb) of your saved 16-bit tiff? BTW, how are you creating the jpegs you've been trying?

[Seanelly]

1 hour ago, Thalestris24 said:

Have you tried 16 bit Fits files? They should be smaller. Check the size of the files you saved? The Autosave.tiff is always 32 bit, floating point so is big. When I said before about possible memory problems I was talking about dram memory, not drive storage. A 32 bit machine can only address 4Gb of which 2Gb is used by Windows. I don't know how much ram you have in your system? but it can't be more than 4Gb. There may be other packages out there... I use one called paint.net which is free but I don't think it handles 32 bit files but should be ok with 16-bit files.

Louise

Edit: I just checked on my system and Fits files aren't actually smaller but might be worth a try. What is the size (in Mb) of your saved 16-bit tiff? BTW, how are you creating the jpegs you've been trying?

16-bit TIFF files are around 140MB, 32-bit around 270, both from the same data from DSS and saved to C drive. The TIFFs I convert to JPG by transferring TIFF to Microsoft Paint 3D, then saving it as a JPG file (215MB) (shame-it's the only way I know how, but it works for Gimp!). Perhaps I could try saving the original TIFF file not as JPG but as TIFF again? I'll give that one a go and see, nothing to lose, as well as saving from DSS as FITs files as you suggest.

Installed ram is 4GB, of which (it says) 2.99 is available.

(TX again for sticking with me.)

[Thalestris24]

10 minutes ago, Seanelly said:

16-bit TIFF files are around 140MB, 32-bit around 270, both from the same data from DSS and saved to C drive. The TIFFs I convert to JPG by transferring TIFF to Microsoft Paint 3D, then saving it as a JPG file (215MB) (shame-it's the only way I know how, but it works for Gimp!). Perhaps I could try saving the original TIFF file not as JPG but as TIFF again? I'll give that one a go and see, nothing to lose, as well as saving from DSS as FITs files as you suggest.

Installed ram is 4GB, of which (it says) 2.99 is available.

(TX again for sticking with me.)

Yeah, big file! I don't know why gimp isn't handling it though. Have you tried the paint.net I mentioned? I use it quite a lot. It does basic levels, curves and noise reduction. I use it for tweaking images before uploading. You could also try saving the 16 bit tif  in .png format.

Louise 

[Seanelly]

25 minutes ago, Thalestris24 said:

Yeah, big file! I don't know why gimp isn't handling it though. Have you tried the paint.net I mentioned? I use it quite a lot. It does basic levels, curves and noise reduction. I use it for tweaking images before uploading. You could also try saving the 16 bit tif  in .png format.

Louise 

Well, it seems that by transferring a TIFF to 3D Paint and resaving it as a TIFF file, I am able to use it in GIMP without crashing! WTF? (sorry, is that acronym allowed?) So, for now at least, I think I'll be okay using this method. The FIT file was a disaster, as I was not able to load it into GIMP, but it is not important now. I will try out paint.net to compare the two. Thanks so much for coaching me through all this!

[Thalestris24]

7 minutes ago, Seanelly said:

Well, it seems that by transferring a TIFF to 3D Paint and resaving it as a TIFF file, I am able to use it in GIMP without crashing! WTF? (sorry, is that acronym allowed?) So, for now at least, I think I'll be okay using this method. The FIT file was a disaster, as I was not able to load it into GIMP, but it is not important now. I will try out paint.net to compare the two. Thanks so much for coaching me through all this!

Um, the moderators may censor you...

Is it saving the tiff as a 16-bit file though? If not, it's a no better than a jpeg. I would still recommend trying paint.net. It's completely free and supported.

Louise

[Seanelly]

2 hours ago, Thalestris24 said:

Um, the moderators may censor you...

Is it saving the tiff as a 16-bit file though? If not, it's a no better than a jpeg. I would still recommend trying paint.net. It's completely free and supported.

Louise

I spoke hastily, and you're right, I think, about the file size (and maybe the censor, too!). Even though I saved the TIFF file through 3D Paint as a selected TIFF file, it is only 4.2 MB in size after working it through GIMP. I don't know how to check on the bit size, but the file size is a dead giveaway, no? And in that case I'm back to where I was really, and will abandon  GIMP at least until I get the dedicated laptop with Windows 64-bit, and check out paint.net. I'll drop you a line to let you know how it goes.

 

[Thalestris24]

32 minutes ago, Seanelly said:

I spoke hastily, and you're right, I think, about the file size (and maybe the censor, too!). Even though I saved the TIFF file through 3D Paint as a selected TIFF file, it is only 4.2 MB in size after working it through GIMP. I don't know how to check on the bit size, but the file size is a dead giveaway, no? And in that case I'm back to where I was really, and will abandon  GIMP at least until I get the dedicated laptop with Windows 64-bit, and check out paint.net. I'll drop you a line to let you know how it goes.

 

Yeah, I think it will only be 8-bit.  GIMP has a setting under Image -> precision. It usually knows what bit depth the loaded file is so points to the precision. Yes, paint.net is quite good. I'm sure there are other graphics apps around.

Louise

 

[toxic]

this is the single exposure image with a single levels stretch and flattened the back ground in photo shop i just converted it to 16 bit tiff 

sorry that i couldn't do any thing with the stacked image all i can say is that for me i find it better to apply changes to the finished stack and save as 16 bit tif it seems to work better than the 32 bit. the 1 thing i do in DSS is to line up the colour levels and to set the saturation to 20% then save it with all changes applied to image.then do the rest in your photo editor.i use photoshop and paintshop pro but you can use what ever you like.

[Seanelly]

12 hours ago, toxic said:

this is the single exposure image with a single levels stretch and flattened the back ground in photo shop i just converted it to 16 bit tiff 

sorry that i couldn't do any thing with the stacked image all i can say is that for me i find it better to apply changes to the finished stack and save as 16 bit tif it seems to work better than the 32 bit. the 1 thing i do in DSS is to line up the colour levels and to set the saturation to 20% then save it with all changes applied to image.then do the rest in your photo editor.i use photoshop and paintshop pro but you can use what ever you like.

This looks darn good for a single 3 minute exposure (I think).

re. the second stacked (37x180s) image that followed this one to lead off this topic, as you say you couldn't do anything with it: I took it, along with this single frame, untouched straight from DSS to here, so I'm curious if there is a problem with the stack, which was the reason for the post in the first place. Or is it the way it was uploaded here? I can't do much with it either, even though I'm only using a generic photo editor which, however, has produced half-decent results from other different stacks. It has me baffled, as most of the 37 frames look similar to the one you used here to obtain this result.

Interesting about converting to 16-bit tiff and your process in DSS. This is something else to write up in my virtual notebook for further study.

I simply must soon get a 64-bit (I'm using windows10 32-bit) dedicated laptop for this new pastime so I can check out the processing programs available and decide how to proceed. I tried Gimp 32-bit but for whatever reason a few minutes into processing it crashes, giving me fatal errors. I've reloaded it and tried 16- and 32-bit tiff and fit files, but the only thing that works is converting to jpeg, and that is only slightly better than using the generic editor I already use. Memory is not a problem and neither is ram, so that's another crazy thing I'm dealing with. Tonight I will try to upload paint.net and see where that takes me. But I need a dedicated laptop anyway, so hopefully all this will be moot in a couple of months. But in the meantime...!