Moon maybe better without stacking

[irandar]

Hi folks,

Just learning about stacking and find that a single photo in the moon stack of 12 is better than the stacked result. Wonder why.

Clear skies, Irving

[Chris B]

Hey irandar, 

I'm just checking in with our Photo Expert for some advice. Any chance you could share the source files? 

[James Ritson]

Hi @irandar, are you by any chance stacking the RAW files? If so, great. If not, it does blow my following theory out of the water a bit 😁

I suspect your lens has a high degree of fringing, and this may be taken care of by Photo's automatic lens corrections when developing a single RAW image. However, when you stack RAW images using a merge operation such as Panorama, HDR Merge or Live Stack, the images don't go through the advanced RAW development pipeline but rather a simplified one where these corrections are not applied.

You could try batch developing your RAW files to 16-bit TIFFs via File>New Batch Job, as RAW files in batch jobs do go through the advanced development pipeline. Stacking these TIFFs should then give you a much cleaner result like you see with your single exposure.

Please do give that a try and let us know if it fixes the issue. If not, we'll investigate further!

[irandar]

On 10/29/2021 at 10:43 AM, Chris B said:

Hey irandar, 

I'm just checking in with our Photo Expert for some advice. Any chance you could share the source files? 

Here they come, lights, blacks and whites. Thanks

DSC04295.ARW DSC04296.ARW DSC04297.ARW DSC04298.ARW DSC04299.ARW DSC04300.ARW DSC04301.ARW DSC04302.ARW DSC04303.ARW DSC04304.ARW DSC04305.ARW DSC04306.ARW .DS_Store DSC04307.ARW DSC04308.ARW DSC04309.ARW DSC04310.ARW DSC04311.ARW DSC04312.ARW .DS_Store DSC04321.ARW DSC04322.ARW DSC04323.ARW DSC04324.ARW DSC04325.ARW DSC04326.ARW

[irandar]

On 10/29/2021 at 11:27 AM, James Ritson said:

Hi @irandar, are you by any chance stacking the RAW files? If so, great. If not, it does blow my following theory out of the water a bit 😁

I suspect your lens has a high degree of fringing, and this may be taken care of by Photo's automatic lens corrections when developing a single RAW image. However, when you stack RAW images using a merge operation such as Panorama, HDR Merge or Live Stack, the images don't go through the advanced RAW development pipeline but rather a simplified one where these corrections are not applied.

You could try batch developing your RAW files to 16-bit TIFFs via File>New Batch Job, as RAW files in batch jobs do go through the advanced development pipeline. Stacking these TIFFs should then give you a much cleaner result like you see with your single exposure.

Please do give that a try and let us know if it fixes the issue. If not, we'll investigate further!

Hi Janes, 

As I remember, I imported one single raw frame to iphoto and adjusted the "definition" slider. The stacking was done with your Astro Stacker. 

I have not tried your TIFF method but have now sent all the raw files to Chris B., as he requested. 

Many thanks for your help. 

Irving

[Chris B]

Hey irandar,

I just downloaded all the ARW files and batch converted them as James suggested and the result was somewhat better (at least to me). 

[irandar]

Thanks Chris

Can the conversion to TIFF be made with Affinity? Was it about the same quality as the single frame?

Best regards, Irving

[Chris B]

Yeah, you an just go to File > New Batch and select all the ARW files and output them as TIFF. The quality was good, however it looks like there was a bit of fringing where the merge happened. This was solvable by using a Defringe filter. 

[irandar]

Hi folks,

I made 10 RAW shots of the moon with a new telescope. Again the edited single shot looks much better than when stacked (one did not stack) and edited. I am trying to proceed as you suggested by saving them as TIFF. ( just go to File > New Batch and select all the ARW files and output them as TIFF)  I can add the files but I am not able to get an output. Maybe I will just try to convert each file separately from RAW to TIFF and then stack. Thanks for your help. Irving

[irandar]

Here again folks. Opened and saved 3 RAW moon files as TIFFs, then stacked three of them, one did not stack. No luck in getting good results with the editing. Took one of the TIFFS and using Develop Persona edited it. The Clarity slider did great work on the craters. See attached. I do not think that with such a good result that stacking could ever make it better. But it does not come even close. Wonder why. Stacking is of course intended to bring out brightness in a faint object. Maybe the moon is not faint enough. Scope is a S-W, 90x1250, Mak and camera is a Sony Nex 5N. Thanks a lot for your help. Irving

[irandar]

I realize now that I was using the Astrophotography Stacking. But now I tried the Normal Stacking on 10 Raw files but the results are about the same after editing with adjustment layers. The single shot with Develop Persona is still much better result.

Regards, Irving

[irandar]

Regarding the normal stacking of 10 Raw, I used one of JRs macros, Enhance Structure aggressive. Took a while to run but gave an impressive improvement. Strange I thought these macros only work with the astrostacking. Saved as 100% jpg. Here is the result. Pretty good but does not justify stacking. The clarity slider on the Persona for a single shot gives the best results. Thanks and regards, Irving

[NotMyFault]

Hi Irving,

I can confirm that stacking is useless for moon images.

When you stack, you do it for a reason: HDR, Focus Merge, or noise reduction (of static objects). None of these use cases apply for moon images:

• HDR is pointless, the dynamic range fits well into regular RAW files
• Focus Merge is pointless, as you get all sharp with one focus setting
• noise reduction is pointless, as you can shoot the moon with ISO 100 handheld even with 600mm lenses (I uploaded several of those).
• When you take moon images, you will have a huge amount of thermal athmospheric distortions - except shooting from Antartica or Arctic areas.  Even at 6000x4000px, the distortions are larger than 1px. This will destroy any theoretical positive effect of stacking. You can see this if you make a video, all the bright spots seems to wander, or shrink and grow. You can even see this with your eye through the viewfinder, or using live view with HDMI to a larger display. 

[Old Bruce]

Using the ordinary stack of 10 TIFFs what method did you use Mean, Median, ...

I will see quite different results choosing Mean over Median with some images. With the Moon I would try Max and Min. I would also try processing the raw files to different contrast ranges.

But as you say you get a better result from the one image so perhaps save some time and go with that.

[irandar]

I don't even know what method I used. Have not seen any solid guidance about the moon from Affinity. And the result is so good using only a single shot that I do not think it could be better. Thanks and regards

[irandar]

Thanks to the guy from Hamburg. Obviously you know much more about this than I do. And from my experience you are right. Wonder why Affinity does not give recommendations about the moon. Do you use Affinity for astrostacking and editing exclusively? Thanks again for your help. 

[Old Bruce]

44 minutes ago, irandar said:

Wonder why Affinity does not give recommendations about the moon.

I can only speak for myself, the last time I took a photo of the moon was in the seventies. And I have never done any photos through a telescope/microscope.

[irandar]

Hi Old Bruce,

Do you stack astro images taken by a camera?

Irving

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, irandar said:

Do you stack astro images taken by a camera?

No, I do stack images made by a camera but I have no use for the Astro-photo abilities of Photo. Far too niche for me.

[irandar]

Hi folks, I thought I was finished with this moon stacking or not. I guess not but guess what?  I find that if I astrostack only one moon shot then I can use JRs macros. The multipass sharpening gives a very nice and detailed result as seen below. Glad for your comments

Regards, Irving

[NotMyFault]

Not bad at all. quite impressing.

there are minor preferences from my personal view:

• overexposed areas should be avoided (4 o’clock position)
• add a denoise filter
• it is a bit too much sharpening, doesn’t look natural 

[irandar]

You might be right. Does look a bit bumpy. I was surprised to be able to use the macros if I stacked one photo. 

[irandar]

This seems to be my best result. Opened single raw file, edited it with 100% clarity, developed it, then used JR's macro, Repetitive bypass sharpening. This is not so aggressive as the Multibypass sharpening I used before. Did not realize before that after developing the macros are available.  Image below is 80% jpg.

Had a communication on another forum from an experienced guy. He suggested I should take a video of the moon with my camera  Sony Nex and stack that. Does video stacking work with Affinity? 

 

[irandar]

Could not make the denoise macros do anything. 

Thanks and regards, Irving

[Old Bruce]

4 hours ago, irandar said:

Does video stacking work with Affinity? 

You have to use Video editing software to eport PNGs or TIFFs of each frame. Be aware that the number of pixels is (usually) far fewer than are available with still cameras. You'll have a smaller result.