What files to keep after processing?

[Spookyer (Brett)]

Hi there, now I am using a cmos camera on a scope I am getting more files and they are larger. As a result processing an image is taking up more space.

I use Pixinsight to process (Kind of a love/hate relationship) so I am planning on deleting all the registered, cosmetized and Calibrated folders on the grounds that if I keep the original images I can recreate these other files if required for later processing.

I am also thinking I could delete the Flats and Flat/Darks I take for each target as I have the Masters of these in the Masters folder.

Does that make sense?
What does everyone do?

cheers
Brett

[ChrisD (Chris)]

Yeah, I only keep the lights and the masters after running WBPP.
Also consider storing them in a directory structure that will make future WBPP reprocessing easier.

Chris

[Startrek (Martin)]

Ive used the 2600MC over the past 3 years and soon to buy a 2600MM , frames are 50MB file size ( huge )
I have 1TB of internal storage on my lappy and 1TB of external storage
I delete my Flats and Bias files every year to clear the decks
As far as processing power with Cmos cameras and large amounts of data , these days you need 16 or 32GB of Ram as a minimum and preferably an i7 multicore processor.
Standard Lappies (eg: i5 and 8GB ram etc… ) from retailers just don’t cut it for Deep Sky or Planetary Astrophotography, from my experiences with the 2600 series cameras

[The_bluester (Paul)]

I keep thinking of (But have not gotten around to) saving calibrated lights out of Astro Pixel Processor and keeping those instead of flats etc. If I am happy with how the flats calibrate then they should come out the same over and over, so I might as well save the calibrated lights (Calibrated with darks, Bias flats etc) and delete everything before that, I can redo integrations from those if I choose to without the "Which flats went with those?" game.