What's your workflow?
- Thread starter ChrisD.
- Start date
I use Lightroom at the moment too. I want to clean out my catalogue but i don't want to lose all my changes
just create a new catalogue
You day lighters have it lucky.. consider this:
1. Polar align your mount accurately enough to get 3 minute exposures.
2. Wait for the scope to cool down
3. Focus - ever wondered how you focus to infinity correctly?
4. Find target.. (or align scope 'goto' then attempt to find target)
5. 20 x 3 minute exposures of the target called "lights"
6. 20 x 3 minute exposures of at the same temp with the lens cap on, called "darks"
7. 20 x 1 second exposures using an electro luminescence panel without moving any optical component (or focus) from taking the 'lights', called "flats".
(so that's 60x17MB= 1,020 MB so far of HDD space eaten..)
Lights - give you the image of your target, example crop:
There be dead pixels and noise (the image has been slightly processed to make it easier to see otherwise the noise is far higher)
Darks - give you the noise from the camera, example crop:
Flats - give you the aberration of the optical train and dust motes:
Nice... about a 1/4 of the way down the right side is a circle - that's a speck of dust causing optical aberration.
You then:
stack flats => master flat
stack darks => master dark
For each light, remove the dead pixels and noise using the master dark. Adjust the picture to flatten it using the master flat.
Then take each processed light, now reduced noise and aberration, and stack them by aligning the stars within. The result is the more stacks the larger the signal and lower the noise (as the noise changes between images the signal gets stronger..
You now have a 'picture'. To get the best out of it, you may need to vary the histograms or do some digital processing tho bring out the detail without increasing the noise.. this can take some time..
Now if you have RGB colour or narrowband.. multiply that by each colour channel! The combine and hope the colours match.
Next if you over saturate an area then you may want to create layers and process different areas of the image separately before recombining into the finished product - a photo.
The thing is you never throw away your lights, darks, flats or resulting images. If you revisit the target.. you can add more data (lights, darks and flats) resulting in a better photo!
As DoubleCheese requested, in my case this is a crappy shot (needed more lights) but to give you the idea:
1. Polar align your mount accurately enough to get 3 minute exposures.
2. Wait for the scope to cool down
3. Focus - ever wondered how you focus to infinity correctly?
4. Find target.. (or align scope 'goto' then attempt to find target)
5. 20 x 3 minute exposures of the target called "lights"
6. 20 x 3 minute exposures of at the same temp with the lens cap on, called "darks"
7. 20 x 1 second exposures using an electro luminescence panel without moving any optical component (or focus) from taking the 'lights', called "flats".
(so that's 60x17MB= 1,020 MB so far of HDD space eaten..)
Lights - give you the image of your target, example crop:
There be dead pixels and noise (the image has been slightly processed to make it easier to see otherwise the noise is far higher)
Darks - give you the noise from the camera, example crop:
Flats - give you the aberration of the optical train and dust motes:
Nice... about a 1/4 of the way down the right side is a circle - that's a speck of dust causing optical aberration.
You then:
stack flats => master flat
stack darks => master dark
For each light, remove the dead pixels and noise using the master dark. Adjust the picture to flatten it using the master flat.
Then take each processed light, now reduced noise and aberration, and stack them by aligning the stars within. The result is the more stacks the larger the signal and lower the noise (as the noise changes between images the signal gets stronger..
You now have a 'picture'. To get the best out of it, you may need to vary the histograms or do some digital processing tho bring out the detail without increasing the noise.. this can take some time..
Now if you have RGB colour or narrowband.. multiply that by each colour channel! The combine and hope the colours match.
Next if you over saturate an area then you may want to create layers and process different areas of the image separately before recombining into the finished product - a photo.
The thing is you never throw away your lights, darks, flats or resulting images. If you revisit the target.. you can add more data (lights, darks and flats) resulting in a better photo!
As DoubleCheese requested, in my case this is a crappy shot (needed more lights) but to give you the idea:
Last edited:
Associate
- Joined
- 26 Jun 2005
- Posts
- 1,487
NickK ...What??? Can you post an example of a completed image?
