when to do alignment

[herman]

Is a there a general rule of thumb on when to do alignment?  I have typically selected a reference image from one of my Luminance subs and use it for all LRGB subs, then combine each channel.  But another strategy could be to align each channel seperately to a sub from each channel and then align the combined LRGB channels at the end.

[dayers]

Hi Herman,

Just StarAlign all your sub-frames at once. Easier. Or you can try it both ways and see which way works for you. That's the beauty of PI. No magic to it: each tool does one thing very well and allows you to try different options.

Dave

[Carlos Milovic]

It is better to avoid interpolarions as much as you can. Each registration will blur your images a little bit, so just use one frame as reference, and align all other frames to it.

[Josh Lake]

I select one of my Luminance frames from the middle of the stack and register everything to that. That way, any drift will take smaller chunks out of the top, bottom, and sides than a big strip out of just one or two sides.