first somewhat succesful star pic

[turbotim]

I tried to load a bunch of 30 sec pics in dss and it said it could only stack 1 of the 4. It said i needed to help dss do something? Have you guys ever ran into this problem? I was still happy about the image are these really all stars and can u guys see any constellations or any thing in there?

[JB80]

I had a similar issue today <here it said can only do 1 of 4, I think it was because I was using jpegs and didn't switch the camera to RAW mode before taking the pictures. I think that was one the issues at least. Plus you need to take some darks as well. They were the 2 things I need to do before I try DSS again.

Mind you I in no way no what I'm doing so I could be wrong.

[turbotim]

I'm starting too think those aren't even my stars in the real pic, because i pressed the button called create a star layer or something does anyone know what that does and i shot all mine in raw, i can shoot in both raw and jpeg at the same time so i will try that cause i think dss want at least one jpeg or something. Im lost, but im not giving up!

[turbotim]

I just found out that one of the things i have been doing wrong is that i have to take the same amount of darks as lights and put the same amount of both into dss.

[Shibby]

Hi turbotim,

Congrats on getting your first astro image. It's very easy to get hooked once you start, trust me!

DSS doesn't mind if you use RAW or jpegs, but RAW is recommended because the quality is better (no compression).

Also, you don't have to have the same number of darks as lights - in fact, you don't need any darks.

The usual reason that DSS can't stack the images is that it hasn't been able to detect enough stars in each sub to align them with each other. Scroll to the right-hand columns of the file list (after "registering" the frames). You will see that one of them is a star count - usually at least 10 are needed to align/stack successfully.

To increase the number of stars detected, you can reduce the star detection threshold. Sometimes, if the star shapes are too trailed DSS really has trouble with them. If this is the case, the "edit stars" mode might be able to help you. Check the user guide to see how to do this.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

[turbotim]

Thanks for the knowledge man! It seems to be working good now and the star detection you taught me helped. Now i cant post a pic of my image like you guys do. I have to shrink it so much after using photoshop, and then when i try to post it on here, someone has to click and download just to see it, how do i fix this? Can i post a pick where its just a pic and not something someone has to click on?

[Shibby]

You can add it as an attachment, just clicking on it displays it full size within the browser. If you prefer it to display in-line, you'll need to use an image hosting service such as Flickr or PhotoBucket. Then you can put tags into your posts.

[jgs001]

When you save the image, use File, Save for Web, that will create a jpg, that can be embeded in a post. Either after uploading to your gallery here, or to an offsite host as Lewis has said.

[turbotim]

Alright, when i try to[ save as] in gimp it says the plugins have crashed or something when i try to save as jpeg.

[JB80]

It did the same for me, I couldn't get gimp to save them at all. I ended up downloading the trial version of photoshop and saved the pictures that way and kept the raw files and converted copies as jpegs. It only gives you 30 days trial though, luckily my wife can get a copy through her work. Also I think some software that you get with your camera may be able to handle raw files so maybe you could try that too.

This is the first time I have used raw files so it's all new to me but using photoshop allowed me to view and save the files easy enough. So yeah I am learning too, maybe someone with more experience can clarify further because maybe their is an easier way.

I guess it's all part of the learning curve.

[jgs001]

Tim, what version of GIMP and what OS ?

[Shibby]

I've not had problems with GIMP crashing before, but DSS opens raw files; it saves to tiff, which most photo editors should be able to handle.

[turbotim]

Its working now, i had to download a plug in and now i can changed my finished pic to jpeg. thanks for all your help fellas! I think i just caught adronema for the first time did i?