Joe,
When Dave says he first captures a single RAW frame, that means a single frame of the object in RAW format. It is a little confusing if you don't know what a RAW format is because there is no selection in Sharpcap to select RAW. RAW here means an uncompressed unprocessed image file, which in Sharpcap would be obtained by saving the image file as a FITS file. You can select this either as your default still image type under "File", "Sharpcap Settings", "Preferred Still Format", or by selecting "FITS files" in the Output Format selection box in the "Capture Format and Area" in the Camera Control Panel on the right side of the Sharpcap user interface. You can capture a single frame by selecting "Snapshot" in the tool bar. Since he is working with a single frame, a program like Deep Sky Stacker would not be relevant. Deep Sky Stacker is for stacking multiple images to bring out detail and reduce noise. You can also so the same sort of thing in real time using Live Stacking in Sharpcap.
Dave then opens the saved FITS file in FITS Liberator (a separate program, not used with Adobe Photoshop, at least for this purpose) so he can view it and play with the histogram a bit to make sure he has a good image before spending any more time capturing long exposure images in Sharpcap. "Stretched" here means that he manipulates (or has the software automatically manipulate) the histogram to bring out more detail in an image. For example, if you bring up the histogram in Sharpcap while Live Stacking, you can change the black level, mid level, and white level to bring out more detail and reduce noise or over exposure. See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIlJHyVWei4 for a demonstration of histogram "stretching" in Sharpcap with Live Stacking. (Note: the demonstration uses an older version of Sharpcap where the histogram stretching tools are a little bit different.)
Taking the time to more closely examine a single frame before embarking on a long exposure is good practice in time management for good astrophotography. I suggest it may be better to skip this step for now and take it one step at a time to even determine what your end goal is. For example, for me, I am currently plenty content with using live stacking (at least for deep sky objects) to obtain a nice image (to me anyway), later processing it in a photo processing program like GIMP (which is a free, open source image processing program that is similar to Adobe Photoshop). Most astrophotographers would probably not consider my images to be very good, but at least at this point, they satisfy me, especially for the minimal time, expense, and effort to obtain them. I just use live stacking and the histogram in Sharpcap to get a decent image before saving it. That way, I can do it all in real time with one piece of software.
As for "binning," don't worry about that now as our camera does not have that capability. Capturing darks and flats will improve your final image, but I suggest you ignore that for now and just concentrate on getting a decent basic image and get familiar with your telescope/camera and Sharpcap. I don't know if you saw my response to your post in the Live Stacking thread, but go back and take a look at that. The 3 basic things you need to attend to first are 1) Getting the object centered in the small field of view of the camera, 2) Setting the right exposure, and 3) focusing. Without at least being "close enough" on all 3, you may not get an image at all of the object.
For now, the only camera menu settings you should really need to change during a session are the shutter speed and AGC level. The camera menu items in Dave's post are not for the Revolution Imager. I have a full description of the menu settings for our camera, but you really don't need to concern yourself with them at this point. You really only need to know the ones that are described in the information sheet that came with the camera, but for now, you should only work with the shutter speed and AGC level.
As for considering an upgraded camera, I would stick with what you have, master it, and then make that determination. My suggestion is to see what type of objects and imaging most interests you first and get an idea of what it entails to achieve that before considering another potentially expensive purchase.
And as for ideas of what to consider shooting for with your eastern exposure, maybe try the Beehive Cluster (M44) in Cancer? As an open cluster, it is too big to capture all of it, but at least it should not be a difficult object to find and it offers more than a single or double star to practice on.
Good luck!
Don
P.S. I must have been writing this at the same time as Dave was responding. Sorry if my answers are redundant or don't take into account Dave's response.