The learning curve....

[Paul M]

Let's make it clear, I'm not an imager...

But, Over these recent clear nights I've had great success with my 250PDS atop my EQ6 Pro controlled via APT with my unmodded EOS1200D. Unguided for now but remember I'm not an imager...

I was pleased with the results straight out of Deep Sky Stacker but had no processing software. So, as you do, I took the bull by the horns and downloaded Potoshop  Can't be that difficult can it?

I'm on the free trial period but I won't cancel if I can get sense out of it.

Tonight I watched this video. I don't offer it as a tutorial nor have I any idea if the chap even knows what he's doing but it gave me some pointers. I used the photoshop methods as described in the second part of the video on my own images after finding my way round and wearing out the video tape by replaying parts over and over!

 

 

I made some progress.

M81 50x 90s plagued by vignetting and light polution and lack of competent flats.

The same image via PS, creating a mask to subtract the gradient.

A quick stack of a handfull of 60 to 120 sec exposures centered on M86, ugly lack of usable flats. 

Same process in PS.

 

I know, my biggest problems are lack of data and my flats need even more work. But I think I might keep hold of PS, a treat to myself in these difficult times

[scitmon]

Before commiting to photoshop, I would also give free trials of Star Tools and Pixinsight a go.  These are dedicated to astrophotgraphy where photoshop is more generic.  Star Tools is much cheaper, simple to use wheras Pixinsight is much more complex but very powerful.

[lux eterna]

If you are interested in general photography as well, I would recommend Photoshop. If (when) you are ready for the next steps, there are some handy plugins for PS, some are free while some are commersial (noise reduction, green tint removal, star fixing, vignetting removal etc etc).

After many years with PS, I took the step to PI, but I still need PS. I only use PI for the first steps, and it still makes me wonder how you can design such a non-intuitive user interface. On a learning curve scale from 0 - 10, I would put PS at 3 and PI at 15.

Ragnar

[tomato]

+1 for the advice on dedicated astro imaging software, but having said that some extremely competent imagers use PS a great deal. Out of the packages listed, I have found Startools to be the easiest to get into, I was frightened of Pixinsight's hard to master reputation, but it's not too bad if you follow the excellent tutorials available on line, there are also a couple of books available that help a lot. Interestingly, in contrast to the previous poster, I have never got on with Photoshop, but then I only use it for astro image processing.

And hey, like it or not, with those photos now posted on here, congratulations, you are an imager. 😀

[Tomatobro]

On 27/04/2020 at 23:56, Paul M said:

Let's make it clear, I'm not an imager...

you are looking at the results and see where improvements can be made in hardware, software and technique. That means you are an imager 👍