I have been using ASTAP of late for its debayering and (seemingly) better registration, even though I am pretty certain it will perform some type of background equalization for KS rejection. Unsure if I will go back to DSS (especially for its speed) once I start doing more mono.
I admit I don't understand Ivo's explanation of DSS "leaving normalization there."
I mean, since the combining and rejection is all meant to create a final stacked file, and the normalizing will (I presume) be done to the levels of one reference frame, then what is there to "put back"?As mentioned earlier though, one potential snag I see is if DSS does not employ some kind of DAF - though how would it do so automatically?
The other selection mentioned above for DSS - RGB Channel Alignment, is not normalizing, but rather a spatial adjustment. This can be good for chromatic aberration or atmospheric dispersion. Kind of like splitting the file into three RGB channels, running registration on them again as if they were independent files, and then compositing them back together.
ASTAP is a little more manually oriented that way, and does not have a separate bias/offset tab with which it would calibrate every other sub, like DSS would do. So if you don't have anything in the darks tab, I don't see how the math for calibration would work out properly and I believe the flats correction would fail.
If you like, take some time and a quite moment and try again step by step. I was too unfocused and impatient at first and just wasted time.