DSS Settings

[Ric]

I was wondering if other users of Deep Sky Stacker would like to share some of the settings they use for their images.

I am just really starting out with it and so as yet I haven't really played with the settings such as the threshholds, hot & cold pixels etc etc.

Mostly all my settings are set to average and default so I'm looking for a few starting points so I dont head off on a tangent and get totally confused.

Cheers

[Matty P (Matt)]

Hi Ric,

I use the default settings for stacking my images in DSS. I wouldn't worry too much about this because the most important part is your processing skills after this step.

I would recommend having a read of User Manual that is located at the very bottom on the left if you haven't already. It is really informative and helpful.

[Tandum (Robin)]

On the left under options is a 'recommended' link. Load up DSS, 'check all' and click recommended. It will tell you what it thinks you should set things to. Also under Options is 'RAW/FITS DDP settings'. Only some of the settings in here are set by the recommended link. Trial and error I guess.

[Garyh]

Hi Ric,
Like mentioned above make sure under Raw/DDP that your camera is selected in the drop down box on the Fits tab. I find bilinear interpolation works nicely and bicubic for alignment...
If you stack the odd frame which might be trailed etc or (plane trail), under stacking parameters on light tab change from average to median Sigma clipping.
When it has stacked your image play around with the luminance and saturation and channels to get a better result..
Hope that helps Ric.
cheers Gary

[Ric]

Thanks everyone for the tips and ideas, that will keep me going in the right direction.

Cheers

[leon]

Ric I'm no expert, far from it, but if and when i use DSS I just leave all the settings on Defualt, seems to work quite fine.

Leon

[bojan]

The only thing I would add here is setting for colour correction.. if you are in heavily polluted area, that is.
Use "Per channels background calibration" (in stacking step1), this will keep the original colour balance of the target.
If you leave "RGB background cal", it will change the colour balance of the resulting image such that the background is gray, and in my case this is not so at all (in Melbourne we have a very strong orange background glow).
This problem can be removed later - I do it with Canon's DPP, basically it is about setting the individual colour channel black treshold, while not chaniging the gamma (too much) which results in "natural" color balance of the final image.

[Ric]

Thanks gents.