Quote:
Originally Posted by rainwatcher
I am totally confused by the number of packages I am trying.
- Nebulosity – which I hate, sorry maker I am sure its good, its just me !
- Registack – which is indecipherable
- Gimp
- Maxim DL – almost out of the trial license and have barely scratched its surface
- Iris
- Virtual Dub
- Canon Digital Professional
- Deep Sky Stacker – which seems easiest but does the least.
Never say die. 
Cheers,
Peter |
Nebulosity is actually my favourite program, but for deep sky, not for planetary.
Registax is a better bet for the planets, and is hard at first, but maybe this will help to decipher it. Have a go at the Jupiter video.
1) Open the video in Registax and align on Center of Gravity with a threshold of 20 using Gradient2 and keep the best 70% of the frames.
2) Create a reference image using the best 100 frames and use slight wavelet adjustments to bring out the finer details without making image noise too appearent.
3) Optimise. Do not Optimise & Stack, just Optimise.
4) When complete, go to the stack tab, show the stack graph, and limit the stack to about 1200 frames limiting the differences mostly, but sometimes limiting the quality as well.
5) After stacking is complete, sharpen using Linear/Default settings, increasing the level 1 wavelets until noise starts showing up, then be conservative with the higher wavelets.
6) Download a Hubble or similar reference image of Jupiter (Just google one up). Use PhotoShop's Match Colour feature to make sure your image has accurate colours. This can really bring out the detail. Not sure if GIMP has a similar function.
This is the method I've been using, based on a technique from Jason, who gets great shots of Jupiter.