Hello again and happy fall! Warren Keller here- IP4AP, Image Processing for Astrophotography http://www.ip4ap.com/. I hope many of you have had the opportunity to get out under some clear sky and image. Here in the US, I and many other imagers are looking forward to AIC- the Advanced Imaging Conference in San Jose, CA www.aicccd.com at the end of the month. A first-time attendee in 2008, I will be doing a 2-part presentation on processing with Adobe Photoshop, also touching on Preprocessing. Hope to see you there! In addition to my duties as presenter and as a vendor of IP4AP tutorial DVDs, I will be debuting as the US sales rep for ATIK Cameras, a name well known to many of the Euro guys, but perhaps not to 'My fellow Americans' (Nixon-Speak). Please consider making http://www.atik-usa.com/ your one-stop source for ATIK cameras in the US, and http://www.atik-instruments.com/ for the rest of the world.
If you have succeeded in getting well-tracked, sharply focused subexposures, what are you doing to Calibrate, (DeBayer if applicable), Align, and Combine them into a finished 'Master File' (RGB) or files (LRGB)? There is no substitute for good signal and lots of it!
Historically I have used Astroart 4 and MaxIm DL. CCDStack is probably the hottest now among CCD imagers. The DSLR crowd seems to like either my friend Mike Unsold's Images Plus or other pal Craig Stark's Nebulosity. DeepSky Stacker Freeware also comes up a lot in discussion. These and other software are all capable of doing the job.
As challenging as successful acquisition is, especially at longer focal lengths and faster f/ratios, I find most 'Noobs' manage to eventually 'ace it' none the less. Could it be because so many of you are Engineer/IT Geeks?!
Successful Preprocessing presents new challenges- how to reduce Light Frames by Dark Frames and possibly Flats, how to Debayer One-Shot Color or convert DSLR RAWs correctly, achieve successful registration and alignment of subs, and finally, what method of Combining to use. Even with these tasks, again- most Noobs eventually 'get it'. And, there are always helpful user groups on Yahoo, Google, Cloudy Nights, and other forums to have your questions answered. The one area that seems to stump so many new-intermediate level imagers is POST-processing. Could it be because so many of you are Engineer/IT Geeks?! :>) Well, in all honesty, I think so. The same Left-Brain wiring which makes so many successful at the hard stuff, often results in a less developed Right-Brain, the 'creative artiste', and this inhibits the production of 'Pretty Pictures'. This should be the easy stuff, because even a dummy like me can do it. In reality however, we are all wired differently, and some of us will not be the masterful processors we aspire to be. Of course, practice helps tremendously as does viewing the work of those folks we admire. An alternative solution is collaboration, which has worked well for me. If you have an artful friend, you can turn your master files over to see what may be hidden! I've benefitted from some very nice data from NM and TX in the US and in turn gotten images published for my partners.
As we move forward, feel free to ask questions of me in your comments to the blog. Truth is, pleasing results can be achieved by everyone. Sooner or later, Photoshop becomes a necessity for taking your images over the top, but don't sweat it until you've got enough to work with. As you accumulate reasonable data, play with it in the preprocessing programs. With the exception of DSS, all of the above have a DDP filter- the Digital Development Process, which can work magic as it applies its 'gamma curve with edge emphasis in the highlights'.
Before I leave you, I'd like to share some 'First Light' which I'm excited about with you all. Pictured is my new Observatory at New Mexico Skies. Soon, well be catching some cosmic photons. See you next time!
If you have succeeded in getting well-tracked, sharply focused subexposures, what are you doing to Calibrate, (DeBayer if applicable), Align, and Combine them into a finished 'Master File' (RGB) or files (LRGB)? There is no substitute for good signal and lots of it!
Historically I have used Astroart 4 and MaxIm DL. CCDStack is probably the hottest now among CCD imagers. The DSLR crowd seems to like either my friend Mike Unsold's Images Plus or other pal Craig Stark's Nebulosity. DeepSky Stacker Freeware also comes up a lot in discussion. These and other software are all capable of doing the job.
As challenging as successful acquisition is, especially at longer focal lengths and faster f/ratios, I find most 'Noobs' manage to eventually 'ace it' none the less. Could it be because so many of you are Engineer/IT Geeks?!
Successful Preprocessing presents new challenges- how to reduce Light Frames by Dark Frames and possibly Flats, how to Debayer One-Shot Color or convert DSLR RAWs correctly, achieve successful registration and alignment of subs, and finally, what method of Combining to use. Even with these tasks, again- most Noobs eventually 'get it'. And, there are always helpful user groups on Yahoo, Google, Cloudy Nights, and other forums to have your questions answered. The one area that seems to stump so many new-intermediate level imagers is POST-processing. Could it be because so many of you are Engineer/IT Geeks?! :>) Well, in all honesty, I think so. The same Left-Brain wiring which makes so many successful at the hard stuff, often results in a less developed Right-Brain, the 'creative artiste', and this inhibits the production of 'Pretty Pictures'. This should be the easy stuff, because even a dummy like me can do it. In reality however, we are all wired differently, and some of us will not be the masterful processors we aspire to be. Of course, practice helps tremendously as does viewing the work of those folks we admire. An alternative solution is collaboration, which has worked well for me. If you have an artful friend, you can turn your master files over to see what may be hidden! I've benefitted from some very nice data from NM and TX in the US and in turn gotten images published for my partners.
As we move forward, feel free to ask questions of me in your comments to the blog. Truth is, pleasing results can be achieved by everyone. Sooner or later, Photoshop becomes a necessity for taking your images over the top, but don't sweat it until you've got enough to work with. As you accumulate reasonable data, play with it in the preprocessing programs. With the exception of DSS, all of the above have a DDP filter- the Digital Development Process, which can work magic as it applies its 'gamma curve with edge emphasis in the highlights'.
Before I leave you, I'd like to share some 'First Light' which I'm excited about with you all. Pictured is my new Observatory at New Mexico Skies. Soon, well be catching some cosmic photons. See you next time!
Best, Warren Keller
http://www.ip4ap.com/
http://www.billionsandbillions.com/
http://www.atik-usa.com/
http://www.ip4ap.com/
http://www.billionsandbillions.com/
http://www.atik-usa.com/
