Deep Sky Stacker

[Johno]

Hello all, I've been trying to get some sense out of DSS. I've not been able to get a usable image out of it.
I've taken a series of images using a Canon 600D and a wide angle lens for the purpose of testing. I have two issues:
1. DSS 3.3.3 beta 45 can't read my raw images.
2. I've converted my raw images (using Canon's Digital Photo Pro) to TIFF and worked with them instead. The result every time is a TIFF file of length 8 bytes only. I've also tried using jpegs with the same result ie. only 8 byte Autosave.tiff.
Can anyone suggest what I'm doing wrong?

[jjjnettie]

Hmmm interesting.
First thing I'd do is remove DSS completely from my hard drive and do a reinstall, and go from there.

[Lester]

Hi John, DSS can be a bit tricky, but once you have it set it is fantastic. As JJ said first may help. I drag and drop my RAW images staight from Canon Digital Photo pro into DSS and it works fine.

All the best.

[Johno]

Thanks jjjnettie and Lester. Actually I first tried running DSS under WINE on my Linux machine. It appeared to run ok but exhibited this problem. So then I installed windows xp under Virtualbox and tried it there with the same result. I then tried the beta version of DSS (3.3.3) with the same result. I've even tried running it on my Mac under Virtualbox and guess what?... same result. So my conclusion is that it's something I've set up incorrectly.
I'll try the drag and drop from DPP into DSS to see if that makes any difference.

[stardust steve]

Hi Johno. I have DSS beta 3.3.3. 37. And mine does not read RAW files either. I am thinking i may need to change a setting or re install. So i use DPP and do a batch process and convert and save my images in 16 bit TIFF. Maybe when you are converting and saving in DPP, you accidentally chose 8 bit instead? Just a thought. Up until very recently i was having a hard time trying to get any colour out of my grey stacked images. After a great deal of reading past threads from IIS, was i able to process my images better and with colour. Here is what helped me http://stargazerslounge.com/archive/index.php/t-103941.html and http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/archive/index.php/t-59762.html and http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/archive/index.php/t-49105.html i hope they help you as much as they helped me:)

[Johno]

Thanks Steve. I think I'll also have to do the conversion to tiff files first and use that instead of the raw files. At least until DSS is updated. Thanks also for the links to the other threads. I'll definitely be needing some of that info when I comes to processing the final image.
In the meantime I think I've solved the problem of the corrupted tiff output from DSS. It was caused by writing to a Virtualbox shared folder so I could copy between windows and Ubuntu.