Mosaic Q

[vineyard]

Hello,

Hope everyone safe & well.  I tried my first mosaic last night (Soul Nebula, 4x4).  Made it about 20% into the 4th panel before clouds came in.  Will try to finish tonight.

Quick Q: how do folks stack & stitch the panels together?  Specifically, is it better to (a) stack them all together in DSS but with the mosaic mode selected so that DSS does the work, or (b) to stack each panel separately and then stitch together in PI (before doing any other processing)?

What are the pros & cons of those two approaches?  (I don't have PS).

Thank you & stay safe!

Vin

[carastro]

I have done very little in the way of mosaics, but I stacked separately and then used ICE to stitch the images together.

Carole  

[Adreneline]

24 minutes ago, vineyard said:

how do folks stack & stitch the panels together?

I tried and failed to use PI to produce a satisfactory seamless mosaic. I am sure it was all due to my inept use of the software and inability to follow detailed and lengthy instructions and procedures.

I now use Astro Pixel Processor. You literally assemble all your channels, sessions, calibration frames and load them into APP in one go and ask it to register as a mosaic. It has worked for me everytime producing seamless mosaics. It can take a while to churn through all the data but there again it was taking me an age to wade through the PI procedures only to produce a result that needed cosmetic correction in PS.

I now use APP for all my calibration, registration and integration tasks and consider it money well spent. I use PI after that for pretty much all my post processing. I sometimes use PS to enhance colour or maybe reduce chromatic noise a little.

Adrian

[vineyard]

 

1 hour ago, Adreneline said:

I tried and failed to use PI to produce a satisfactory seamless mosaic. I am sure it was all due to my inept use of the software and inability to follow detailed and lengthy instructions and procedures.

I now use Astro Pixel Processor. You literally assemble all your channels, sessions, calibration frames and load them into APP in one go and ask it to register as a mosaic. It has worked for me everytime producing seamless mosaics. It can take a while to churn through all the data but there again it was taking me an age to wade through the PI procedures only to produce a result that needed cosmetic correction in PS.

I now use APP for all my calibration, registration and integration tasks and consider it money well spent. I use PI after that for pretty much all my post processing. I sometimes use PS to enhance colour or maybe reduce chromatic noise a little.

Adrian

Thanks Adrian - yes I tried stitching some DSLR lens images on PI earlier this summer, and was a bit underwhelmed compared to what Lightroom managed to do much less painlessly.  Probably driver error, but there's only so much learning that this particular driver can do in any given time!

Hmm re APP.  So it sounds like APP substitutes for the role DSS in my choices?  I've never used APP so will do some research & comparisons to DSS (being Mac-based, APP does seem to have an immediate advantage, but would come at a cost and also another learning curve - research it is, and it looks like some cloudy days ahead anyway :) ).

Cheers,

Vin

[Adreneline]

1 hour ago, vineyard said:

So it sounds like APP substitutes for the role DSS in my choices?  I've never used APP so will do some research & comparisons to DSS (being Mac-based, APP does seem to have an immediate advantage, but would come at a cost and also another learning curve - research it is, and it looks like some cloudy days ahead anyway

APP does substitute for DSS but it also does a lot more. I use it as rental software and it is my software of choice on my MacBook and my PC laptop. There are lots of online tutorials although much is pretty self-evident in terms of useage and accepting defaults often works very well. Regarding mosaics I used this as my guide when I started (albeit the printed version in S@N) and it works every time. I would recommend downloading the fully working trial and having a play. 

Good luck with your deliberations.

Adrian