How to Debayer 32-bit FITS files

[poolemarkw]

Live Stacking lets you save the stack in both 16-bit and 32-bit FITS files. In both cases the files need to be debayered. PIPP works to debayer the 16-bit files but gives an error "32 not supported" when I try to use it to debayer a 32-bit FITS file. I assume that I would always want to do my post processing with the 32-bit file if I could get it debayered?

Thanks,

Mark

[admin]

Hi Mark,

you shouldn't get a raw file saved by live stacking. Live stacking works in full RGB mode and will save RGB files (the only exception to this is if you are using a colour camera and have deliberately chosen to turn debayering in off in the camera settings. In this case you would end up with a raw output but various other live stacking features like alignment would be disabled as that is not possible to do properly on a raw image).

Do check your live stack save files again as they are hopefully already in RGB format.

Cheers, Robin

[poolemarkw]

The Live Stacking SAVE option includes:
- Save as 16 bit stack (FITS file is created)
- Save as Raw 32 bit stack (FITS file is created)
- Save with Adjustments
- Save exactly as seen

The first two options are generating FITS files that need to be debayered. Pipp will debayer the 16-bit FITS file but not the 32-bit FITS file. Do I need to change a setting so that FITS files aren't generated?

Thanks,
Mark

[admin]

Hi Mark,

Ah, that's just an unfortunate choice of wording in the menu items for the save options there. By raw here it means unprocessed by the live stacking histogram stretch, colour adjustment, sharpening et cetera. The fits file saved is actually a full-colour fits file with 3 planes at full resolution (i.e. red, green, blue planes). You can see that in the image below of a saved file being opened in fits Liberator.

Capture.JPG (113.51 KiB) Viewed 5548 times

Cheers, Robin

[poolemarkw]

Hi Robin,

So....how do I go from the 32-bit FITS image that needs to be debayered into a Tiff file that IS debayered?

Mark

[turfpit]

Mark

Can you upload a single frame to somewhere on the internet so I can have a look at this?

Dave

[poolemarkw]

Lets approach it a different way...

After live stacking with my color camera, I save a 32-bit FITS file and want to do my processing (stretch, enhance, etc) in Photoshop CC. Photoshop CC cannot open the FITS file, so what are the steps that I must go through (and tools to use) so that I have a resulting file that is debayered (in color) and can be opened in Photoshop? My attempts to just do a "Save" from FITS Liberator into a .tif file have resulted in monochrome files.

My process for the 16-bit color files is to first debayer using PIPP and save as a .tif file, which I then can edit in Photoshop. My assumption (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the 32-bit file contains more information than a 16-bit file and therefore can result in a better final picture.

Thanks Again for your help!

Mark

[admin]

Hi Mark,

both pixinsight and Astro art will correctly load the 32-bit 3 channel fits files saved by live stacking. So will deep sky stacker if you are looking for a freeware approach. The 32 bit files do contain more information than the 16 bit files although unless you are taking very long stacks all you might find is that you are measuring the noise that remains in the image are finer granularity rather than really capturing any extra detail in the 32-bit file.

Hope this helps, Robin

[poolemarkw]

Thanks Robin! I was able to use Deep Sky Stacker to create a debayered .tif file from the 32-bit FITS file. Yay!

[admin]

Excellent, glad to hear it's sorted!

Cheers, Robin