DSS vs Nebulosity vs ???

[solo05]

Hi All,

I have been trying to follow this thread and have read it several times

I have downloaded the 9.17 dcraw and tried to run it. All it does is flash what I assume is a dos window at me and disappears.

Should it remain open for me to input one of the suggested strings What do I do then

I am afraid this might all be beyond me and would need hand holding the whole way

What with this and the thread on "giving startools stdev data from stack" I am more confused than when I started.

Are these 2 threads related in their aim or am I not seeing what each is trying to achieve. All I want is to stack my images with the minimum of fuss and then process them in Star Tools.

Regards
Steve

[Cheman]

Steve, In Ivo's absence, I'll try to answer your concerns.. If I'm not totally correct, I'm sure someone will chime in

dcraw needs to be run from the command prompt. I believe there are also UI's available for it for windows.

dont worry about the stddev stuff yet. This is in the works for possible future use.

If "All I want is to stack my images with the minimum of fuss and then process them in Star Tools. "
Easiest way for now is to just stack in DSS(or whatever stacking program you like) then open the result in StarTools and process away.

DSS actually uses dcraw, however, it does not allow the user full controll over it. If you set up DSS as Ivo suggests, DSS will do an admirable job of stacking.
But(there is always one)since it controls dcraw the way IT wants, we do not(apparently) get truly virgin, unaltered data via DSS. All this is related in the sense that what we are after is stacked data that is unaltered as much as possible and the stddev is to get even lower noise levels.
So, if you want easy, DSS then Startools for now.
If you want to give DSS unaltered data to stack run dcraw(with proper parameters) and feed those to dss to stack

Eventually, we MAY get a dedicated stacking program that will also produce the stddev data that can be used by Startools to give us the best data possible to process
Che

Hi All,

I have been trying to follow this thread and have read it several times

I have downloaded the 9.17 dcraw and tried to run it. All it does is flash what I assume is a dos window at me and disappears.

Should it remain open for me to input one of the suggested strings What do I do then

I am afraid this might all be beyond me and would need hand holding the whole way

What with this and the thread on "giving startools stdev data from stack" I am more confused than when I started.

Are these 2 threads related in their aim or am I not seeing what each is trying to achieve. All I want is to stack my images with the minimum of fuss and then process them in Star Tools.

Regards
Steve

[solo05]

If you want to give DSS unaltered data to stack run dcraw(with proper parameters) and feed those to dss to stack

Thanks Che, this is exactly what I want to do.

We are talking about things where a lot of assumed knowledge is taken for granted. I found this little gem and now I can get dcraw to run.

"Windows DCRAW versions require no installation since they consist of just a single compact .exe console application file. This file is named dcraw.exe and can be directly copied in the C:\WINDOWS\ path to be accessible from any folder when it is called in the command line." Such a simple sentence but one that clears up any ambiguity.

Now all I have to do is work out how to write the correct file path to the files I want converted.

Regards
Steve

[solo05]

OK I found this information on the same site as the last bit and it sort of works apart from when I run it every line says no such file or directory and it produces a *.PPM file as the output. I was expecting a *.Tiff, any idea why it did that.

DCRAW SCRIPT FOR WINDOWS

To avoid having to use the command line and save time when developing files with DCRAW, it is recommended to assign DCRAW into the options of Windows Explorer so that when doing Right mouse → 'Send to' DCRAW appears as one of the choices. To do that this simple script can be used:

@echo off
:begin
if _%1_==__ goto end
echo Processing %1...
c:\windows\dcraw -e %1
shift
goto begin
:end

We will save it with some easy to identify name such as dcraw.bat in 'C:\Documents and Settings\user\SendTo' for Windows XP, or in 'C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo' for Vista users, where user is our usual Windows username.

To locate the second pathname in the user friendly Vista, it can be necessary to enter in the 'Run' box (left Win + 'R') the string '%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo' that will take us to the correct path.

In order to see the 'SendTo' folder, it is possible that we have to enable in Tools → Explorer Options the checkbox 'Show all hidden files and folders', this option can be restablished later once the script has been copied.

Once the script is saved we just have to select with the mouse a RAW file or group of files, and with the right button send them to the script. Of course we can define several scripts with different development options each (in the example above we did not develop the RAW file, just extracted the embedded JPEG thumbnail associated).

I am using windows 7 but the sendto is in the same place as Vista and I used the dcraw -v -r 1 1 1 1 -4 -T -S 32767 -k 0 -o 0 *.CR2 as supplied by Ivo instead of the -e%1 in the script.

A bit of experimenting and if I use the command prompt dos box without going the sendto route, cd all the way to the files I want to convert and run the dcraw it produces tiff files as expected so there seems to be something wrong in the script somewhere.
It opens the command prompt in the correct file location with the files to be converted but then seems unable to use dcraw correctly. Any help from the scripting guru's would be greatly appreciated as my files are in a very long deep file structure and having to cd to every drive and sub directory would be a pain.

Regards
Steve

[Cheman]

I can be of no help when it comes to scripts
sorry
Che

[JMorris]

I am using windows 7 but the sendto is in the same place as Vista and I used the dcraw -v -r 1 1 1 1 -4 -T -S 32767 -k 0 -o 0 *.CR2 as supplied by Ivo instead of the -e%1 in the script.

A bit of experimenting and if I use the command prompt dos box without going the sendto route, cd all the way to the files I want to convert and run the dcraw it produces tiff files as expected so there seems to be something wrong in the script somewhere.
It opens the command prompt in the correct file location with the files to be converted but then seems unable to use dcraw correctly. Any help from the scripting guru's would be greatly appreciated as my files are in a very long deep file structure and having to cd to every drive and sub directory would be a pain.

I am far from being a "scripting guru," I didn't even know you could add things to the Windows Send To menu , but I was able to get the script to work on my Windows 8 machine.

Something that might help to find out why it's not working on your machine is to put a 'pause' command into the batch file at various places. Then, instead of flashing briefly on the screen, the command prompt dos window will remain until you "Press any key to continue..." For instance, putting the 'pause' command immediately after the call to dcraw as follows:

@echo off
:begin
if _%1_==__ goto end
echo Processing %1...
c:/windows/dcraw -v -r 1 1 1 1 -4 -T -S 32767 -k 0 -o 0 *.CR2
pause
shift
goto begin
:end

would give you a chance to read any error messages dcraw is producing. It would also help you catch any typing errors in the script itself. (When I was first trying it I had missed the colon (:) before the word 'begin.' It printed some complaint about 'begin is an unknown label' or some such thing.

Actually, and just to prove I'm not a scripting guru, I don't know whether that whole :begin . . . :end loop is necessary if you are using the *.CR2 option in the dcraw line. It looks to me as if that loop is meant to step through all of the files one by one but, with the *.CR2 switch, dcraw will do that all by itself. If I had more time I'd practice with just the c:/windows/dcraw etc. line in the file and see if that works but I've got to get to bed!

Maybe the real scripting gurus could shed some light here.

Jim

[solo05]

Thanks for the pause heads up Jim

Worked a treat and now I can run any folder full of cr2 files with one click.

It does seem strange stacking tiffs in DSS instead of raw files.

Any settings I should be aware of when stacking tiffs in DSS ?

Regards
Steve

[admin]

Gee Jim, nice going!
I would've struggled with scripting you did there (it's been a loooong time since I did any batch scripting for Windows/DOS). Thanks!

[admin]

Any settings I should be aware of when stacking tiffs in DSS ?

Just make sure RGB Channels Bacgkround Calibration and Per Channel Backround Calibration are set to 'No' and you should be good!

Screenshot-Stacking Steps-1.png (36.8 KiB) Viewed 15762 times

[JMorris]

Gee Jim, nice going!
I would've struggled with scripting you did there (it's been a loooong time since I did any batch scripting for Windows/DOS). Thanks!

Thanks Ivo, but the major part of that script was something Steve found on a website someplace. All I did was to suggest the 'pause' line.

Jim