Processing and stacking software

hello everybody
i need to find new Processing and stacking software to my astrophotography. i have the cpc 1100 gps xlt telescope and i struggle a little bit with deep sky stacker… what kind of software you recommend that is good for astrophotography and Processing and stacking etc…?

I recently discovered AstroPixelProcessor and was amazed with the results. The ui is a bit tricky to get used to but once you get around it the results are a lot better than deepskystacker (at least from what I got out of it). Also the light pollution removal tool is the best I found until today.

However comet stacking is not yet implemented so if this is something you are looking for you might need to consider something else. If not, grab a trial license watch the tutorials and give it a go.

Best Frank

Frank do you recommend it over PixInsight?

Christopher

I am afraid I don't have much experience with PI but as I understand the Mosaic registration is way better and the debayering algorithms are a bit better (so in theory a bit sharper images). That's all I have heard so far. Pixinsights will probably have some more features that APP doesn't have yet, however I am quite happy with it (once I got my head around the workflow

)
F-

I use Maxim DL. Yes, it is expensive but I find the calibration and stacking procedures are very good (now I know how to use them!) LRGB stacking is very accurate, with automatic calibration and scaling of RGB subs. There are lots of good video tutorials on YouTube. I especially like those by John Blackwell and the guys at OPT.

If the stacking portion of DSS is working for you, you can process the stacked image in StarTools, usually with far better results than trying to stretch in DSS itself. It's very reasonably priced, IMO.

do you have something free?

Only if you value your time at zero.

Seriously, though, if you have a Mac or Linux machine, Siril is great for stacking and post processing, but there is no windows port. FWIW, in demo mode, star tools will let you do anything but save your changes, so you can see the entire functionality of the program.

fwiw?

"For what it's worth"

Matt, many thanks for mentioning Siril, I wasn't aware of it.
New version 0.9.1 works fine on my Linux based computer (Lubuntu 16.04).
Cs Harald

I've been doing mostly Pixinsight + Lightroom for the final touches. But I'm curious, are there better tools out there than PI? I was always under the impression that PI was more or less the de facto standard in terms of accuracy and functionality?

I've been using Nebulosity 4 for post processing and have been pretty happy - I use DSS for initial stacking though. I would be curious to see everyone's software train and pluses/minuses that they have found for each. I'm still pretty new at astrophotography and would like to see what everyone uses.

Matt, many thanks for mentioning Siril, I wasn't aware of it.New version 0.9.1 works fine on my Linux based computer (Lubuntu 16.04).
Cs Harald

Harald - happy to be of service. I quite like it myself.

I've been doing mostly Pixinsight + Lightroom for the final touches. But I'm curious, are there better tools out there than PI? I was always under the impression that PI was more or less the de facto standard in terms of accuracy and functionality?

Joel - that is my understanding as well, but I'm cheap, and working my way up to justifying the cost. So far, Siril and StarTools mostly get me what I want.

Nebulosity is great for stacking and I found it gives far superior results to DSS.

+1 for DSS and Startools for a low cost choice
I'm going to try Siril as well, I tried IRIS once for rosette nebula becase it sopports combining pictures with different scales: veeeery complex but it worked!

Hello, Siril is now in version 0.9.7. Then, Siril has been ported to Windows.

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