Is there any agreement on what software for a complete imaging newbie?

[Martyn A E]

I'm pretty well on the way to be set up with hardware with a nice 10" newton, EQ6R Pro with a ZWO ASI294mc camera, filter drawer, ZWO OAG with ASI174mm guide camera and Baader MCC and intend to bring it all together with an ASIAIR Plus if anybody ever gets some stock.

After much trawling of forums, YouTube videos etc., I'm still no clearer in what stacking and processing software to use as a beginner. I hope to be able to image remotely without a laptop (ASIAIR) and then do the rest indoors at leisure. I'm a native Mac user but have a Windows PC that would suffice if necessary.

From your experience and knowledge which software package(s) would suit a beginner with the above workflow? 

Thanks in advance

 

Edited February 14, 2022 by Martyn A E
Spelling error

[barbulo]

I use a mini PC on the rig, running APT, PHD2 and CdC under W10, remotely accessed from my iPad or MBP using Microsoft Remote Desktop. 
For pre and post processing I used DSS, SiriL and Photoshop. Now I’m testing a free demo of Pixinsinght: very powerful though not very intuitive. 
HTH

[DougM43]

Astro pixel processor is worth a look at for stacking and post processing,

that said I use Deep sky stacker for stacking and move the images to APP just because DSS stacks much faster  than app and I do seem to get a cleaner image but that maybe just because I’m still quite new to processing. 
 

[Dinglem]

Hi @Martyn A E I can guarantee there will be no agreement of what software packages to use for astrophotography, as there are many to choose from and people generally recommend the ones they use.

As someone new to this hobby I'd suggest you look at free packages like Deep Sky Stacker to begin with as some of the paid ones are not cheap, GIMP is a good alternative to Photoshop for post processing.

I'd also recommend YouTube there are quite a few tutorials on using these free applications, that way you will end up with some reasonable images  to start with.

From experience you need to concentrate on getting good data captured first and learning how to process it without spending a fortune on software that is complex and difficult to learn.

Once you're fairly competant at that you can look at the merrits of the more expensive all in one packages.

[The Lazy Astronomer]

1 hour ago, Martyn A E said:

I'm pretty well on the way to be set up with hardware with a nice 10" newton, EQ6R Pro with a ZWO ASI294mc camera, filter drawer, ZWO OAG with ASI174mm guide camera and Baader MCC and intend to bring it all together with an ASIAIR Plus if anybody ever gets some stock.

After much trawling of forums, YouTube videos etc., I'm still no clearer in what stacking and processing software to use as a beginner. I hope to be able to image remotely without a laptop (ASIAIR) and then do the rest indoors at leisure. I'm a native Mac user but have a Windows PC that would suffice if necessary.

From your experience and knowledge which software package(s) would suit a beginner with the above workflow? 

Thanks in advance

 

You're likely to get many opinions on this as stacking and post processing software is plentiful.

My opinion is Deep Sky Stacker is probably the easiest to use in the beginning as it's pretty automated, just don't even consider using it for post processing as it's really not suitable for that. 

Siril is another free option for a stacking program, which does have some decent post processing ability as well. 

Gimp is a good free alternative to photoshop if you resent the idea of a monthly subscription.

At the 'paid for' end, most (all?) offer trial periods for you to evaluate them. I'd recommend trying them out and seeing which best suits you. Some examples of software to try include: APP, AstroArt, Startools and Pixinsight.

You will often find people use a mixture of different software to do different things, depending on what they get on best with in the software they use. 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Certainly for starting out my vote goes to Nebulosity.

It will do all the pre-processing and calibrating and has some basic post processing capabilities, enough to stretch images and do some basic noise reduction. Certainly enough to get some half decent images pretty painlessly.

Also some very good tutorials on the web.

Nebulosity Tutorials

It is not free though, I think around £60 last time I looked  Apparently it is thanks @fozzybear 
It is a great introduction to the processing techniques and is easy to use.

Steve

Edited February 14, 2022 by teoria_del_big_bang

[fozzybear]

6 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Certainly for starting out my vote goes to Nebulosity.

It will do all the pre-processing and calibrating and has some basic post processing capabilities, enough to stretch images and do some basic noise reduction. Certainly enough to get some half decent images pretty painlessly.

Also some very good tutorials on the web.

Nebulosity Tutorials

It is not free though, I think around £60 last time I looked but is a great introduction to the processing techniques and is easy to use.

 

Nebulosity has gone open source so a freebie as of Oct 2021

http://www.stark-labs.com/index.html

Edited February 14, 2022 by fozzybear
added url

[fozzybear]

An alternative to PS is Affinity photo runs on PC/Mac also there is a Guru on here who has written some excellent Astro Macro's take a look at. worth the 50 euro's albeit i got mine on 50% promo that is for affinity photo so keep and eye out 

 

 

Edited February 14, 2022 by fozzybear
added text

[ONIKKINEN]

Have a look at Siril: https://siril.org/

Its free and easy to use (for an astronomy software that is...). You can use it to preprocess and stack your images, but also do some post processing. Stretching and colour balancing especially in this software is just a couple of clicks, and will definitely be easier to do than manual fiddling with sliders in GIMP/Photoshop/some other non-astro software.

 

[rickwayne]

We all indeed have our favorites. I use and recommend Astro Pixel Processor partly because it was recommended to me as a beginner by some very experienced, capable imagers who had used a variety of packages. It guides you through the basics of calibrating, stacking, and stretching, has a really terrific light-pollution/gradient tool that's simple to use and pretty much obviates the need for filters even from my Bortle 8 back yard. And its "happy path", just loading up files and clicking "Integrate", is likely to produce good results with the default settings. And there's support, which is pretty important for any of these programs.

[Robculm]

+1 for Siril. It's got great pre-set / auto stacking if you don't want to go in to detail and of course you can learn how to do it all manually in more depth as you like. As Onikkinen mentioned, you can also look at the resulted stack and edit to some extent.

I started with GIMP for processing, you can also get free PY asto add on's etc, but I found it to be very 'hit & miss', no logical processing steps, so unless you gradually figure it out and write yourself a process flow...

I then switched to Startools which personally I find ideal. It might not be to everyone's liking, but it has a set process flow, you can spend just 20 minutes (assuming you have reasonable hardware!) going through the set steps and end up with a very decent image. Likewise you can spend as long as you like fine tuning the steps. Only downside (could just be my lack of understanding though) is that you can't save your progress along the way and go back to edit steps very easily.

As has already been commented though, there are many options / preferences. Computing is not a strong suite for me, so I've opted for Siril + Startools where you can get a great result without a steep learning curve! If you have a stronger capability & plenty of spare time, you might prefer other options!

[The Lazy Astronomer]

45 minutes ago, Robculm said:

Only downside (could just be my lack of understanding though) is that you can't save your progress along the way and go back to edit steps very easily.

This is one of my main gripes with Startools. I'm someone who likes to fiddle around and tweak things (quite often detrimentally, to be honest 😅), so I can easily spend many hours over several days processing. Not being able to pick up from where l left off was irritating. 

That said, Startools does write a log file of every action you perform, so it is possible to retrace your steps, as it were, if you want to get back to a certain step and carry on processing from there. 

[alacant]

Native mac? kstars, siril and startools.

HTH

 

[alacant]

10 hours ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

Not being able to pick up from where l left off was irritating.

?

You don't really need hours upon end with StarTools, but if you so wish, you can replay your session as many times and over as many days as you like.

Or just close the computer lid/sleep/suspend (or whatever it's called when you press the power button)...

Cheers

Edited February 15, 2022 by alacant

[iantaylor2uk]

I use Deep Sky Stacker (DSS), which is free, for stacking light, dark, flat and bias frames as it is very fast. 

I tend to use a combination of Nebulosity 4 (which is also now free) and Affinity for processing the final fits image from DSS. 

There is a bit of a learning curve with both DSS and Nebulosity, but I think less of a learning curve than with some of the more complex software. 

Hope this helps

[bottletopburly]

11 hours ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

This is one of my main gripes with Startools. I'm someone who likes to fiddle around and tweak things (quite often detrimentally, to be honest 😅), so I can easily spend many hours over several days processing. Not being able to pick up from where l left off was irritating. 

That said, Startools does write a log file of every action you perform, so it is possible to retrace your steps, as it were, if you want to get back to a certain step and carry on processing from there. 

You could  use guys Replay to load the log file from your session and edit if you wanted @jager945 may advise  better.

https://forum.startools.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1368

 

 

[AstroMuni]

40 minutes ago, alacant said:

Native mac? kstars, siril and startools.

Sound advice.

@Martyn A E My laptop is Linux based and I use Kstars & Siril. The MacOS is after all Linux under the hood so most software that work on Linux are likely to have a Mac edition.

[ollypenrice]

Stacking and calibrating is a mechanical and essentially mundane process which can be handled by all the dedicated packages listed in this thread. The really important first steps in post processing are gradient removal and colour calibration, which are related to each other. Be sure only to choose a package which can do these things easily and well. Everything you go on to do in post processing is predicated upon those two first steps and, if they are not done well, will lead you into irreparable processing errors. Time and again we see beginners posting images which have been black clipped in order to remove residual gradients, meaning their faint data have been discarded and only starting again can restore them.

Personally I use Pixinsight's Dynamic Background Extraction or Automatic Background Extraction for this but I do little else in Pixinsight. It's a powerful program but it's willfully obscure and isn't somewhere I like to spend my processing time. Astro Art's gradient removal isn't bad and I get the impression that APP's is very good indeed. I'll leave it to others to comment on their favourites - but make this your first priority.

Adobe's business model has made Photoshop public enemy number one for many people but I do most of my processing in there. It has risen to its celebrated position for good reasons and lets me use layers and selection tools in a 'touchy-feely' kind of way while seeing in real time what effects an intervention has.  Others prefer to work differently in different programs.

Beware of U-tube tutorials, many of which are exercises in aimless floundering! The moment you hear the perpetrator say, 'I just play around with these sliders till I like what I see,' switch them off and delete them from your hard drive.  As you learn processing, make it a rule never to use any intervention you don't understand. Work out what it's doing to the data and think it through. Begin by being crystal clear on what's going on in the histogram, in levels and in curves (or whatever name these are given in your program.) This 'stretching' is what it's all about in AP.

And, finally, remember that few processes should be applied to the whole image. Sharpening, noise reduction, adjustment in colour intensity, etc. etc. need to be done selectively to different parts of the image. This is so blissfully easy in Photoshop (and maybe in its cheaper or free imitators.)

Olly

[teoria_del_big_bang]

14 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Beware of U-tube tutorials, many of which are exercises in aimless floundering! The moment you hear the perpetrator say, 'I just play around with these sliders till I like what I see,' switch them off and delete them from your hard drive.  As you learn processing, make it a rule never to use any intervention you don't understand. Work out what it's doing to the data and think it through. Begin by being crystal clear on what's going on in the histogram, in levels and in curves (or whatever name these are given in your program.) This 'stretching' is what it's all about in AP.

What a great bit of advice.
I spent a couple of years trying my best in Pixinsight following some of these and never learned a thing in two years, yes I got some images processed doing this,  but could I do the next image the same way, no, had no idea what these sliders and parameters were doing.
I bought a really good book on PI and followed some good tutorials by Adam Block and learned more in a few months than the previous two and still learning but at least when I press the button now to change the image I know what I have done.

I now love Pixinsight and you will find many do love it and many hate it.
And the short time I spent with Photoshop I discovered the way PI works and is presented is so totally different from Photoshop and I think most other major contenders out there and takes a bit of getting your head around, and I can see that those well familiar with PS or similar applications may not get on with PI at all.
I really got into PI very early, and whilst following the rubbish tutorials had a bit of a love / hate relationship with it but once I stopped watching them and decided to learn what some of the processes do and stick to sing the ones I know .
There are so many processes in PI but honestly knowing how to use around a dozen of them well is enough to get your processing done, so stick with them and learn them well and you will get the most out of your images.

Like I say I an very much still learning and a fair way to go 🙂 

Steve

[DaveS]

Can I make a shout-out for AstroArt 8? In addition to being a much underrated processing package it's also your one-stop-shop for capture, guiding and focusing. Yes, you have to pay for it but it's much less expensive than PixInsight as well as being less brain melting. 

I would also add Deep Sky Stacker for rare occasions where AA8 throws a wobbly during stacking, and Affinity Photo for final "polishing".

 

Edit; The gradient reduction tools in AstroArt keep getting better with each iteration, plus the license allows you to have the package on more than one computer,, so you could have it on a laptop or remote PC for ths capture part, and also on your main PC for processing.

Edited February 15, 2022 by DaveS

[barbulo]

I fully agree with @ollypenrice that most of YT tutorials are not that useful. They’re normally workflows valid for perpetrator’s tastes and abilities. However, you can learn something from them now and then. 
IMO, processing is such a creative activity, and programs are so complicated, that there is no way you can learn all the insights of a given one. 
For me as a beginner, the most difficult part of processing is to identify what should I have to do with my data (not what the program is able to do, which is surely far more than I need), and how, to obtain the best of it according to my taste. And I don’t think anybody can teach you that. That’s part of the “art”. 
Just my view.

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, barbulo said:

For me as a beginner, the most difficult part of processing is to identify what should I have to do with my data 

Spot on. I always insist that the first key skill to learn is how to look at your image or, rather, how to see it.  What needs to be done is always right there in front of you, but first you have to see it.  As a beginner, and even as an experienced imager, this can be harder than you might think. Indeed, I still don't trust my own judgement on the background sky after many years of imaging and always measure it to make sure its values are equal in red, green and blue and to be sure that it's not getting too dark. (Too light's not a problem and can be fixed as the final operation.)

Olly

Edited February 15, 2022 by ollypenrice
Typo

[scotty38]

Agree with @ollypenrice and @barbulo this very much rings a bell with me. I use PI and "know" how to use a few of the tools but should I use that tool, hmmm that bit I am not so sure....

[Planitair]

This like everything else in Astronomy regarding all equipment, Software, Scope, Mount, Camera etc etc is quite subjective

Its down to personal choice. after looking around, reading up, asking questions like you have, then you will have a good idea of what will work for you.

I keep things simple by using a comprehensive piece of Software like Sharpcap Pro, PA, high gain, short 30 sec subs, Stacked, no guiding, no calibration ,play with the Histogram and obtain reasonable images, save Stack and run it through DSS, then improve in post processing software, I use PSCS2 ( found it free a while back on internet)

GIMP is free but I wasnt keen on it.

Pixinsight is probably the best but cost a bit too much for me.

Eric

 

Edited March 7, 2022 by Planitair

[adyj1]

I'm getting on well with Affinity Photo and its astrophotography features - a few useful YouTube videos (from affinity) available too. 

sub-£50 one-off cost after a free trial. 

Seems a reasonable place to start as a beginner and has a lot of similarities with Photoshop if you decide you want to move into the 'big league' of spending. 

There are better, more expensive processing tools for better, richer astrophotographers than me 😉