Astro Stacking with G'MIC?

Software G'MIC
21

Wow, that did the trick! Thank you so much! Averaging 16-bit files worked splendidly, now I’m testing the “median” stack to see what the difference is.

I sort of figured that G’MIC was saving it in a higher bit-depth format, but I didn’t know how to tell it to save in a different format, so thanks for clearing that up for me as well! I just downloaded the “g’mic reference” .pdf file, so hopefully I’ll be able to answer some of my own questions (like how to batch convert .tif to .jpg, and so on) and not have to bother you too much.

22

Thank you again to everyone who helped me out! Here’s one of the projects I was working on:

2000×1331 1010 KB

I managed to keep in a 16-bit workflow until the final 8-bit JPG for web! And if I ever learn RAWTherapee well enough, the workflow will be totally free!

5 Likes
23

Here’s another view of the same sky, (taken on a different night).

Pentax K-5IIs + 50mm f/1.7 lens

  • ISO 4000
  • Aperture: f/1.7
  • Shutter Speed: 2.5 seconds
  • 25 frames aligned with Hugin, averaged with G’MIC

2000×1325 1.34 MB

2 Likes
24

For comparison, here’s what one of the original frames looks like, processed (in Lightroom) with exactly the same parameters as the stacked image:

1365×580 1.3 MB

1 Like
25

That’s some nice results you got there. :slight_smile:
Now that you have the noise more or less under control: maybe try stopping down a little bit to control the coma. :slight_smile:

26

Thanks! Yes, I wish now that I had tried stopping down to f/2 or f/2.5. :frowning: I honestly didn’t even realize how bad it was till I got home to my laptop and looked at the images. When I’m in the field and zoom in on the camera LCD, it always zooms in on the middle of the image, which of course doesn’t have any coma! :slight_smile: