AS3! Problems

[Mandy D]

I did a two image stack of the Moon last night. Each of the subs were not exactly sharp, but were what I had, so I decided to stack them. The result, straight out of AS3! without any futher processing looks over-processed to me, especially considering the quality of the originals. Does anyone have any idea what is happening here? Both subs and the unmodified AS3! output image are attached, along with a screenshot showing the AS3! settings I used.

Edited September 27, 2023 by Mandy D

[geeklee]

HI @Mandy D I believe its the "Sharpened" setting.

Apologies if you've always used this without issue.  I've always found it too much and prefer to take the stack from AS!3 and run deconvolution etc elsewhere.

Can always deselect to easily test if it's not giving expected results this time

[Mandy D]

@geeklee Thank you! I hadn't spotted that. I've just tried again and, yes, it is giving more the result I would expect. In the output folder it normally places two images and I now understand that one is the unsharpened and the other is the one that has been over-processed. I've always used the latter. I still have much to learn about this process. I'll stick to GIMP for sharpening, now. Thanks.

[Mandy D]

Here is my B&W result of stacking the best two images and no sharpening applied in AS3! Processing in GIMP, as follows:

Convert to B&W using mono mixer, dropping out the blue channel.

Adjust curves to deepen shadows and balance highlights.

Sharpen 0.500.

The result is much closer to what I was expecting and looking for. I wanted to pull out some detail of the crater in the second image. I'm going to have to get closer in next time, as I was only at 600 mm with 4.88 μm pixels. Last night was a rush job with poor conditions and sub-optimal equipment.