I can give you the sequence of commands that I use. My sequence is made up from various tutorials I found on the net.
Some notes before I start:
- I can't comment on RAWs, my camera only does JPG.
- I don't apply dark frames as my camera does this automatically to each image and there is no way to turn it off to do my own darks.
First time you run Iris do File->Settings and set the 'Working Path' to a directory on a drive with a lot of space.
Lets say we have 10 images of the Southern Cross.
1. File->Select Files
2. Select your image files in Explorer and click Iris on bottom toolbar to bring it back up again. Drag and drop your files onto the Select Files window.
3. Type a generic name (e.g. 'sc' for Southern Cross) and click 'Create The Sequence'.
4. This writes files sc1 ... sc10 in the working directory.
5. Open a terminal window (Click on the button with the '>' symbols and horizontal lines)
6. Set stuff before we register the images:
'setspline 1'
7. Type 'coregister2 sc screg 10'
This registers the image files and writes the output to screg1 ... screg10
(10 is the number of images you have)
8. 'add_norm screg 10'
9. When finished click the 'Auto' button in the Threshold window.
(The colours will look weird, this is normal. Do not panic yet :-)
10. Select the area of the image you wish to stack by clicking in the image for a lower left point and an upper right point. (The coords you have click appear in the Output window).
11. Now crop the area from the registered images with:
'window2 screg scregcrop ll_x ll_y ur_x ur_y 10'
where ll_x is the x coord of the lower left point,
ll_y the lower left y coord etc etc.
12. Remove the offset from the images with:
'noffset2 scregcrop scregcropnorm 0 10'
13. Now we can stack with:
'composit scregcropnorm 3 1 1 10'
14. When finished type 'stat'
15. Look for the negative numbers in the output window (one for each colour R, G & B). We need to offset the image by the most negative number so there are no negatives involved. (This has to do with why the colours are weird).
16. 'offset #' where # is the positive value of the largest negative value. (E.g. if the largest -ve number is -1457, then type 'offset 1457') The image will turn white most likely (Still do not panic)
This is where I depart from Iris because I can't get the hang of stretching and adjusting curves in Iris. From here I go back to Registax to stretch the image.
17. File->Save and save the resulting image to a TIFF file 'sc.tif'
18. Registax won't like the resulting TIFF file it needs to be 16 bit, so I load in into Irfanview and resave to 'sc_16bit.tif' which converts it to 16 bit.
19 I then stretch and adjust as normal in Registax.
That is the procedure I use from the top of my head. It should be enough to at least get you started and get used to Iris.
Go here for all the tutorials you can poke a stick at. It also has a reference manual of all the commands:
http://www.astrosurf.com/buil/us/iris/iris.htm#tutorial
Sorry I couldn't go into more detail but I need to start some work now
Use the reference manual on the above site to read up on the commands I have listed here. Feel free to ask questions if I haven't explained anything clearly. Good luck with it. It really is an excellent program and I wish I had more time to sit down and look at all the other features it has.
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