glend
13-09-2018, 10:21 PM
This topic seems to come up alot in posts where folks are using DSS to register and stack their files, and sadly it is not covered in the DSS User Manual. What I am referring to here is the ability to register all of your files, from your various filters, so that everything stacks without any rotation, offset, etc.
There are a couple of ways to do this, but I am going to describe the way that I use all the time, simpy because it is so simple and takes vitually no time to do.
Let's say you have a mono camera and have shot R, G, B, and L subs and you now need to register all the subs for each of these filters. This is straight forward and covered in the many DSS tutorials. So say you have 80 subs for each filter, you load these 80 subs in the Group tabs on DSS, and put your Darks, Bias, etc in Group One (Dark, Bias, etc always have to be in Group One). Processing one Group at a time, tick all the files, making sure you pick up the darks, and bias as well in Group One. Run DSS and you will get an output file for that Filter Goup, save that file as you wish - I always work with TIFF files. Repeat this process for all your filter Groups. At the end of this processing sequence you should have one registerd and stacked Group output file (for R, G, B, & L). At this point the Group output files are not registered against each other, and if you try to post process in say Photoshop they will not align.
DSS can easily align these Group output files. Step 1, clear DSS files and bring in only your four Group output files (as Lights), for R, G B, & L. You don't need to worry about Darks, and Bias at this point as these output files have previosuly been calibrated and likewise with hot pixel correction etc. Select Register the Checked files, and the Register Box will open, select "Register already registered files", this will force re-registration of the output files against the best of the four. Now Select Stacking Parametres and go over to the Intermeadiate File tab, and tick "Create a Registered and Calibrated Frame for each light frame". This creates a new registered (aligned) output file for each of your filter files and renames it by appending the .reg suffix on the file name in your output folder.
Now you have all of your filter output files aligned correctly (as your ****.reg files) and they can be moved to Photoshop or your other further processing application and you can be sure that when layered in those apps the stars and features will align correctly and not require further tweaking.
BTW you don't have to worry about stacking these files when creating the .reg files as you won't need a stacked version if your continuing with Group filter file layering.
Once you have learned to do this procedure, it literally takes just a few minutes to register (align) all of your Group (filter) output files in DSS, and it is a much simpler process than trying to seed registration reference files into each Group and align the Group to that reference file, and then track and delete that file from the other Groups.
I hope this helps clear up confusion about alignment of output files in DSS.
There are a couple of ways to do this, but I am going to describe the way that I use all the time, simpy because it is so simple and takes vitually no time to do.
Let's say you have a mono camera and have shot R, G, B, and L subs and you now need to register all the subs for each of these filters. This is straight forward and covered in the many DSS tutorials. So say you have 80 subs for each filter, you load these 80 subs in the Group tabs on DSS, and put your Darks, Bias, etc in Group One (Dark, Bias, etc always have to be in Group One). Processing one Group at a time, tick all the files, making sure you pick up the darks, and bias as well in Group One. Run DSS and you will get an output file for that Filter Goup, save that file as you wish - I always work with TIFF files. Repeat this process for all your filter Groups. At the end of this processing sequence you should have one registerd and stacked Group output file (for R, G, B, & L). At this point the Group output files are not registered against each other, and if you try to post process in say Photoshop they will not align.
DSS can easily align these Group output files. Step 1, clear DSS files and bring in only your four Group output files (as Lights), for R, G B, & L. You don't need to worry about Darks, and Bias at this point as these output files have previosuly been calibrated and likewise with hot pixel correction etc. Select Register the Checked files, and the Register Box will open, select "Register already registered files", this will force re-registration of the output files against the best of the four. Now Select Stacking Parametres and go over to the Intermeadiate File tab, and tick "Create a Registered and Calibrated Frame for each light frame". This creates a new registered (aligned) output file for each of your filter files and renames it by appending the .reg suffix on the file name in your output folder.
Now you have all of your filter output files aligned correctly (as your ****.reg files) and they can be moved to Photoshop or your other further processing application and you can be sure that when layered in those apps the stars and features will align correctly and not require further tweaking.
BTW you don't have to worry about stacking these files when creating the .reg files as you won't need a stacked version if your continuing with Group filter file layering.
Once you have learned to do this procedure, it literally takes just a few minutes to register (align) all of your Group (filter) output files in DSS, and it is a much simpler process than trying to seed registration reference files into each Group and align the Group to that reference file, and then track and delete that file from the other Groups.
I hope this helps clear up confusion about alignment of output files in DSS.