Mac OS Stacking software?

[Ant]

What options are there for stacking software for the Mac?

I use DSS of the PC which is easy to use and free. It doesn't work on the Mac.

Is there a free equivilant for the Mac OS? This'll be for DSLR shots (not webcam).

Cheers

Ant

[jgs001]

Ant, There is something, I found it last night. I'll dig it out and post it later. However, if you get VMWare Fusion 2 as well, then you can then run DSS within a windows virtual machine on the mac. I had some issues with doing this with my M42 image from last night, but I think that's more down to the file sharing, and DSS not being able to access the Mac shared disk properly (it couldn't write out the tifs). I'm going to try it again, but this time copying the files to the windows environment first.

[James]

Would Keiths Image Stacker be of any use?

James

[jgs001]

That's the one I was going to dig out, thanks James

[Ant]

I found that through a google search, but that seems to be for AVI's...

Will it work in RAW frames as well.

Ant

[James]

I believe, although I haven't tried it yet, that it opens FITS/RAW, TIFF, jpeg and others as well.

James

[jgs001]

I couldn't get it to take a bunch of RAW's last night, but that may just be lack of patience on my part, it's supposed to.

[Robd]

Ant,

you could try ImageSXM http://www.liv.ac.uk/~sdb/ImageSXM/

The program is primarily for analysis of SEM images. However Steve is an astrophotographer and has astro routines included in the suite.

These will process tiffs and nikon and pentax raws. At present it does not support Canon raws. However with samples to work on Steve will include the necessary routines, once he has the time.

The astro routines are activated by holding keys a,s,t as the program starts.

Steve wrote the routines for his own use, so they do things the way he wants them to, not necessarily to everybodies taste.

There are still some outstanding bugs that Steve is working on as well as a few enhancements, but due to work these are rather low priority.

I am just doing a couple of runs with ImageSXM and DSS with the same images. I will post as samples when done.

May be worth a look.

Rob

[Ant]

Cheers Guys.

This is for a friend at work who is our photographer - he's got more DSLR's than you can poke a stick at.

I'm about to lend him a few bits and he's going to have a go. But being a MAC user needs to have software that works on a Mac (obviously).

DSS would be great as thats what I use. But I'll point him towards Keiths Image Stacker and ImageSXM.

Cheers guys - keep the suggestions coming if there are any others.

Ant

[Robd]

OK as promised a few versions of the same stack of 5 images of - yep - M42. Only one dark ( multiples is one of the outstanding changes ).

First using DSS.

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No processing the image was saved with the embed option.

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First image with a couple of curves applied.

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And the colour corrected

From ImageSXM

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No internal scaling applied.

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A couple of curves in photoshop

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and colour corrected

The last two are with the application of a couple of internal features

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ImageSXM applied some stretch and flattened the image.

(click to enlarge)

A much smaller curves than before and a little levels to darken the sky.

I will attempt to answer any questions, but if you get to technical then you will have to eMail Steve - details are on the web site.

Rob