Deepsky Stacker colour?

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Hi all,

I processed some shots of orion and scorpio, the frames had colur in them but when stacked in deepsky stacker, I lose the colour and it looks black and white, any ideas?

[Gama]

Most images that are downloaded from the camera RAW, have the color information encoded. This is evident by the way the image looks like it viewed thru a flyscreen mesh. You have to convert it to color first before stacking. Because you lose the encoding information by combining the other images encoded info on top of other encoded info.. So first convert to color, then combine them...
What i do sometimes, is i add all the frames together and convert to monochrome, this gives me my luminance. Then i convert some of the frames to color, then i combine them. I then split the color image into RGB, i then bring in the luminance and then combine them using the LRGB combine function. This then gives me a color shot.

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Interesting, thanks for that will give them a go. how do I convert to colour then?

[Gama]

Depends on what software your using. Its in most astro imaging programs, like MaximDL, etc.. look for "Convert Colour" or something similar.

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

at this stage I only have deepsky stacker, photoshop and not much more..

[Garyh]

Hi Andrew,
Have you adjusted the saturation shift? after it has stacked your image you have your histogram, luminance and color shift. I find about 15% color shift gives close to original color..The luminance settings are the real bugger to get just right as the defaults are not very good.. way to dark...hope that helps
Gary