SharpCap Forums

I have been getting in the habit of capturing the raw frames when I do live stacking. I normally capture in Raw8 format to save disk space, but I'm having trouble processing the files. The manual says that Raw8 files can be debayered by programs like Registax or Deep Sky Stacker, however, the captured frames appear black and white in those programs. If I load a frame into Registax, it comes up with the message "Image appears to be B/W". DSS doesn't report a problem, but the images appear black and white in the program and after stacking. I'm missing something obvious, but I can't figure out what it is. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi Larry,

DSS for some reason only has the option to debayer on 16 bit images. Registax is a mysterious world all of its own!

What I'd recommend is using the brilliant 'Pipp' application (https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/downloads) to convert your raw frames to RGB before processing if you are having trouble.

cheers,

Robin

Thanks for that link Robin. I downloaded it and gave it a try, unfortunately still no joy, at least in DSS. It's strange because DSS says on the file info line that the files are RGB 8-bit, but when it stacks them, it comes out in B/W still. I think this may be a limitation of DSS, although when I try to open one of the output frames from PIPP, just in windows photo viewer, it still appears B/W also. I think for now I'll just save raw frames in RGB until I figure this out.

Larry

If you PM me, we could arrange for me to pick up some of your RAW8 files (how depends on what size they are) for me to have a look at and see if I can work out a process for you to follow.

Dave

Hi Larry,

DSS has a tendency to make colour images look monochrome even when they aren't - there's a saturation adjustment somewhere - try increasing that a lot to see if it's really in colour but just not very much colour!

cheers,

Robin

Thanks to Dave (turfpit) I now have a working solution for this. The key is the input setting in PIPP. You must check "Debayer Monochrome Frames" under input settings, and then select "RGGB" under "Colour Debayer Options". The RGGB selection works for my ZWO 224MC camera, but may be different for other cameras. With these settings, my RAW8 images were converted to color when I saved to PNG files on the Output Options, Output Format setting. My converted frames could then be stacked and processed in DSS.

Cheers Larry.

Nice image from Deep Sky Stacker.

This was the key screen in PIPP.
Dave

A HOWTO document for this post can be found at viewtopic.php?f=35&t=254.

Dave