24
25
2. Select
Convert Raw to Color
in
the
Process
menu.
3. Select
StarShoot Pro High
Quality
in the
Camera Type
pull
down menu (Figure 17).
4. Click
OK
and the image should
appear in color. You can make
several adjustments to the Color
Balance if needed (see “
Color
Balance
”).
Combining Deep Sky Images
Each individual deep sky image is faint and has a noticeable amount of noise.
Combining the individual deep sky images eliminates the noise and enhances
the detail in the deep sky object by improving the signal to noise ratio. The
more images you combine, the better the resulting image will look. (Figure 18a
and Figure 18b).
Now that you have multiple images of the deep sky object, you will combine
the images to form one high-quality resultant image. To do this:
1. Select
Combine From Disk
from the
File
menu. Find the folder you indi-
cated with
Folder
, open it, and select all images for stacking using the
mouse left-click and the Shift key, then click
Open
.
Note: The
Combine From Disk
fea-
ture enables you to combine all of
your images at once without having
to open each image which saves sys-
tem memory.
2. The
Combine From Disk
win-
dow will appear (Figure 19). For
Align Mode
, choose
Manual 1
star – shift only
. (If you have field
rotation due to a poor polar align-
ment or if you are using a motor-
ized altitude-azimuth mount, then
you can use the
Manual 2 stars
align mode.) In the
Output
box,
select
Average
. Make sure the
Use Centroid
and
Auto Next
boxes are checked.
3. Find a well-shaped (circular) star in
the first image displayed. Use the
mouse to center the crosshairs on
the selected star and left-click.
Note: In addition to Average men-
tioned above, 3 other different com-
bining methods can be chosen: Sum,
Median, and Sigma-Clip. To learn
more about these combine methods,
see “Image Processing – Combine
Methods”.
The program automatically moves to the next image.
4. Center the crosshairs on the same star in this new image, and left-click
again. Repeat this for all the open images; a chime will sound when you
have gone through all the open images. (If you use the
Manual 2 stars
align mode, then select another alignment star in the first image displayed
after you hear the chime).
5. If you find an image that looks poor, you can reject it by clicking the
Reject
Image
button. Use the
Next Image
(and/or
Previous Image
) button to
continue going through the open images after an image is rejected.
At least one image must be used as the reference image for the stacked
images to be overlaid upon. The default uses the first image for the reference
image. If you reject the first image or otherwise want to use another image as
the reference, click the
Set As Reference
button. If the image currently cho-
Figure 18a.
Before your images are
combined, an individual deep space
image will have more noise and less
detail.
Figure 18b.
Combining multiple deep
space images greatly increases the detail
in the resulting combined image
18a
18b
Figure 19.
The
Combine From
Disk
window allows “stacking” of
individual images into one high-quality
resultant image.
Figure 17.
The
Convert Raw to Color
window converts your raw StarShoot Pro
images to RGB color.
