newbie to StarTools, help with M31

[basketballfreak6]

hi everyone, glad to have stumbled on this program and forum, newbie here getting a bit stuck trying to process the m31 data and would love some help

so i stacked about 90x 1 min subs with 20 darks and 20 bias (no flats) with DSS, left as untouced as i can and exported as fts as per what i've read up so far and got this when first loaded into StarTools:

then after first AutoDev:

then after cropping out stacking errors and using default Wipe which seemed to remove those gradient rings and vignetting nicely:

but then when i do second AutoDev i get this:

and now i am stuck and don't know where to go from here

here is a link to the fts file via my microsoft onedrive account:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsFANHck-FulhFY6Y99RkboJOBVq

if anyone can point me in the right direction that would be massively appreciated, thanks in advance!

[admin]

Hi,

There are a few things going on here.
First off, it appears your data has been heavily modified, color balance and stretched.
There is also some heavy banding going on. Can you tell us what the source material is? Are they RAW files straight from the camera?

Does using the autosave.tiff (or autosave.fts) file yield the same results? Does that file look identical to yours?

Are you using the following settings (pertaining to channel calibration)?

"Giving StarTools virgin data is of the utmost importance. For example, if you are using DeepSkyStacker, make sure 'RGB Channels Background Calibration' and 'Per Channel Background Calibration' are set to 'No'."

Thanks!

[basketballfreak6]

Hi Ivo! files are from my new Canon 5D mk4, as DSS doesn't seem to want to play nice with the raw i converted them to .dng first (so technically should still be "untouched" and complete data)

when i stacked them i made sure RGB channel calibration and per channel background calibration were both off and exported straight after stacking has completed

myself can't explain why the heavy banding...i shot it from the outer suburbs of brisbane where light pollution is i think ~4 on the bortle scale...

i remember having similar issue with the tiff file when i loaded into adobe lightroom

[admin]

Hmmm...

Something is definitely not right. I'm suspecting the DNG conversion may have something to do with it. What do you use to convert to DNG? The RAW converter that opens up the RAW file (such as Adobe Camera Raw - stay far away from it for AP-related use!) before you save it again may be applying all sorts of operations that could be causing your issues such as color balancing, noise reduction, sharpening, etc. because it assumes you want all that done as it assumes it's your one and only image (and not just one out of several to be stacked and processed linearly).

If your camera is not supported by DSS directly, I would recommend seeing if it is supported by the latest dcraw command-line utility for your operating system (which many RAW converters use internally).

Using that you can convert the RAW files to something that'll work even better with StarTools than what DSS produces (see here).

[basketballfreak6]

Hmmm...

Something is definitely not right. I'm suspecting the DNG conversion may have something to do with it. What do you use to convert to DNG? The RAW converter that opens up the RAW file (such as Adobe Camera Raw - stay far away from it for AP-related use!) before you save it again may be applying all sorts of operations that could be causing your issues such as color balancing, noise reduction, sharpening, etc. because it assumes you want all that done as it assumes it's your one and only image (and not just one out of several to be stacked and processed linearly).

If your camera is not supported by DSS directly, I would recommend seeing if it is supported by the latest dcraw command-line utility for your operating system (which many RAW converters use internally).

Using that you can convert the RAW files to something that'll work even better with StarTools than what DSS produces (see here).

hi Ivo, i used adobe's DNG converter (so does not actually go through camera raw so shouldn't have applied anything as far as i am aware, but i could be wrong), i will give dcraw a try tho and get back to you!

[basketballfreak6]

sorry do I download dcraw from here:

https://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/

and is the file i want to download dcraw.c? thanks

[admin]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply.
On the dcraw page there are links to some binaries. If running windows, it points you to
http://www.centrostudiprogressofotografico.it/en/dcraw/