Orion StarShoot Pro Processing?

[ddickins]

Hello, I do apologize if I am repeating a question, I have read through messages for a week but can't seem to find the answer. (At least one I recognize as the answer..) or a tutorial.. I also apologize if I do not properly explain what I need, I am such a noob, and am having a difficult time..

 Is there a tutorial from start to finish on just basic, from the very beginning to the end, preprocessing,processing, editing an image?
 
 my husband is the amateur star genius.. I am just someone that likes to look at pretty pictures, but wanted to share his hobby with him so I am doing the part that is less desirable to him, editing the files to make the pretty pictures.. Only I know nothing.. He is buying me the software I want to use, once I find the software I like. Ive tried several, only to keep coming back to PixInsight, Love this!!
 
BUT,
 He uses Orion StarShoot Pro v1 and MaximDl Essential to take the pictures. So I am assuming they are already color(?) thats what he says at least.. But when I pull them in to here, they are gray scale.. looking at all of the tutorials, I assume that I debayer, in order to use them. but then somewhere I would need Red, Blue, Green, and Luminescence.. so how would I get these seperate as is showed in numerous tutorial videos..

Obviously, I do not know what I am talking about.. it sounds so much more clear inside my head than when I type it out..sigh... lol... But if I can figure out how to do this, It will be worth sounding as a fool... =)

 Most tutorial videos (that are awesome by the way)  start out, and the guys already have the images they are going to use, up on the PI desktop, seperated in Blue, Green, Red, and Luminescence. My question is, how did they get those?! Nothing (that I can find.. shows how those came about, and I know that all cameras are different.
 But surely they arent already there.. Do they get those from aligning, or from calibrating, do they cal, align, the same photos 4 times, naming them different, (blue,red,green, lum. ) when they cal align them..? I am just very confused on this part.. Other than that one part. I have down how to do the rest of the editing, its just how to get those images.. So I am just trying to self teach myself on how to do the editing from start to finish.  So I can wow the hubby with some awesome photos! =0..
  One I am working on now is NGC6992. I believe I did aligning, and image integration per a great video here. But it is still in gray, and not a R,B,G, or L... lol sigh... I have confused myself I'm afraid... ( it is too large to attach the FIT file..)

Anywho, if you are able to decipher my message in what I mean, that would be awesome to explain to me.. I would sooo appreciate you!
 
So far, I am just loving this PixInsight.. I was using cs6 before with DSS. That was okay, but this is so much better to me! If I weren't such a noob...

Thank you!

 
 

 

[Alejandro Tombolini]

Hi ddickins, welcome to the forum.

It is supouse that you have a set of lights, bias, darks and flat. Or at least a set of lights?

I hope you read spanish, if not you can have an idea using a translator. Take a look to this tutorial that will give you an idea of the preprocessing steps and some setting needed.
The picture you have are in color and you need also to know which is the debayer pattern of your camera to set it when using debayer script.

See Enzo preprocessing tutorial:
http://www.astrosurf.com/astronosur/pixinsight/preprocessing-1.htm

PixInsigth has BatchPreprocessingScript that would allow you to have the picture ready to process, but you may want first see every step separately.

See Harry Video realted to BatchPrepocessing
http://www.harrysastroshed.com/preprocessing.html

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Alejandro.

[Nocturnal]

Hi,

what was the issue with DSS? If you can't get DSS working with your images I'm not sure jumping in PI to stack them is a good idea. DSS is close to turn-key automatic for most cases. PI offers much more control and may be able to improve on DSS results but it's not a requirement to use PI stacking.

I've use PI since it was in beta and DSS for about as long. I still use DSS for stacking. Join us on the DeepSkyStacker yahoo group if you'd like to discuss any problems you may have with it. I co-moderate that group with the author.

Now if you are successfully stacking with DSS then I recommend you keep doing that for now and simply move your post-processing to PI. It'll limit your learning curve. Once you're familiar with PI you can still decide to move your stacking into PI as well.

[pfile]

is the starshoot pro a color camera? then yes, either in DSS or in PI you will have to figure out the bayer pattern and debayer the images. DSS does the debayering for you as part of the stacking flow. the PI BatchPreProcessing script also will debayer.

if the starshoot pro is color, then you'll never get a "real" L image from it. after debayering you will have a single image with 3 "planes" - red, green and blue.

if it's a mono camera, then you'll have separate images taken thru different filters (L, R, G, B) that need to be combined at some point in the flow.

[ddickins]

First, Thank you all so much. You have cleared up a weeks worth of confusion in one post.. Why I didn't just ask sooner...

 Alejandro, Thank you, I am using Enzo tutorial steps now, the debayering part was something I was leaving out., so glad to have these links!

Nocturnal, Thank you,  DSS  really does rock. I was successful with DSS, it did all the work for me =) . I am a group member there, I just have this terrible problem with asking for help... something I am definitely going to have to work on, this was so much less stressful, asking.. =)  Your recommendation is a good one, using DSS until I better familiarize myself.. I am not sure why I wasn't doing that, I stopped processing completely while I turned this into a mind challenge to beat!.. I would much rather enjoy while I learn instead of burning myself out.. I was reading up for 8ish hours a night trying to figure this out..

pfile, yes, it is a color camera, I think that is how I got so confused.. DSS was doing the work for me, so I didn't think about debayering once I got over here. And didn't one time think to look at the Batch preProcessing script until reading the responces... sigh..
 I think I was putting all tutorial videos into 1 when obviously cameras aren't the same, so how to process wouldn't be the same either...  Some day I will learn all of this.. hopefully..

Thanks so much again, I truly appreciate your help!
 Alignment is going now. Off to sleep for a bit while it aligns, Tomorrow will be fresh mind with a better knowledge, thanks to your help! =)


 

[Josh Lake]

One thing you should definitely do, ddickens, is post a set of data or even a stacked master frame to the Imaging Challenge section of this forum. If you give this community data, they'll process it and document the steps with screenshots or even a video! That way, you'll be able to see exactly what (and why) people process the way they do. Some of the steps are a 'must' for any image, and then later steps are often 'to taste', depending on how you want the final image to look.

If you make a new thread and host some data (with Dropbox or the PI forums own Endor server), I for one would be happy to take a look and show you the process with your own data.

In the meantime, I found this official PI YouTube video from Vicent Peris to be an excellent intro for start-to-finish processing. Many of the steps apply to any data set: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqhLKIjGMXA&list=PL67AB2FC8F37C35B1&index=2&feature=plpp_video  (2 parts)

[dayers]

Welcome, ddickens! You have come to the right place to share your new image processing experience.

If you haven't already found them, Warren Keller & Peter Prouix are producing an excellent set of tutorials, 16 to date and growing. There is a modest subscription charge, but I highly recommend them.

http://www.ip4ap.com

Dave