Dan,
You can get serious about processing without MaximDL. Investigating gradient problems and colour shifts can be performed in Photoshop without much effort. MaximDL does take some of the guesswork out of determining problems, but you still need to understand what you are looking for. Like most astronomical software, its functions are overwhelming at first and takes time to understand how they work and when to apply them (which is important as some tasks will introduce noise if performed in the wrong order).
For me MaximDL is the backbone in my imaging projects. I use it for CCD camera control, guiding, image reduction and specific processing functions. While you could potentially use it for your entire image processing routine, I find that certain functions perform better in other applications (this of course is a matter of opinion and experience). For example, even though MaximDL has an image align function, I use other software (Registar) as it performs the task with great accuracy and can scale images as required. Similarly, for deconvolution, I use CCDSharp instead of MaximDL’s deconvolution function. You’ll still need Photoshop for image cleaning, creating filter/layer masks etc to reduce noise, smoothing and bring out subtle details etc etc.
I really do enjoy batch processing script capabilities of MaximDL. You can automate so much work. Finally, there is a lot of plug-ins for MaximDL that extend functionality. One which I use is designed for taking sky flats. I simply enter the desired ADU count and it alters the exposure as the sky brightens or darkens to ensure the ADU count remains consistent.
Which leads me on to your flat field query. I recommend you look at the following IIS article to give you a grounding of darks / flats.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/index.p...63,211,0,0,1,0
They’re not hard, but you need to ensure you do it right. If you’re going to introduce a calibration error, it will usually be with your flats. So carefully analyse each frame. Again, I use MaximDL to validate a good flat sub before I combine them. This can be achieved through MaximDL’s animate feature where images a “blinked” in succession. (This is also a great way of check for possible discoveries in your sub frames after calibration/reduction – now and then I get a satellite in a few subs. These are removed once a median combine function is performed).