Leigh, Thank you so much for replying. I have not tried that but will. I have attached L, R, G, B tiffs of a piece of china on the wall in my house (I am testing my equipment before going after the stars). The levels are not adjusted and especially the blue is very dark as I did not adjust the exposure time. These are done with a monochrome chip with the different L,R,G, B filters. I have successfully combined the different pictures in an astronomy program called Nebulosity and the colors look appropriate. My understanding of the normal workflow for combining these images is to adjust levels and then combine them by assigning them to different channels. If using the masks how do you add the appropriate color to the mask before combining them? Also, I am a little confused as to the luminance channel. Is this interchangeable with the alpha channel (I am revealing my total ignorance here). Does it need to be colored before combination or is the black and white ok? Thanks so much. Hopefully I will attach the files properly. They have little diagonal lines in them because I had to convert them from "FITS" files (the camera makes fits files) into Tiffs and the program I used is a trial program and adds those lines until you pay for it.
Thanks
John Freeman
Memphis,TN
Ugh, I just tried to upload files and it said I am not permitted to upload this kind of file. They were not too large so I am not sure how to accomplish the upload.