Access to individual darks and flats?

[SteveSD]

I haven't done it, but I know it is possible to capture darks and flats in Sharpcap which are then applied to the resulting "as seen" stacked image which can then be saved for further processed in Photoshop, etc. But what if you want to have access to the individual flats and darks so that you can load those along with the individual lights into programs like DSS, Siril or Sequator and let those apps do the stacking/registering, etc. ? I know there are options in SC to save individual light frames but does that option also exist for darks and flats? Thanks !

Steve

[admin]

Hi Steve,

sorry, there isn't any way to do that at the moment. You could kind of work around it by capturing the individual dark/flat frames normally, then using the folder monitor camera (https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#Virtual%20Cameras) to re-process those frames. The normal use of this is to run previously captured light frames through live stacking, but you should be able to use it to load previously captured dark/flat frames and make use them for SharpCap's 'Capture Dark' or 'Capture Flat' tools.

cheers,

Robin

[SteveSD]

But if the whole point of wanting access to individual darks and flats would be to use them in a program other than Sharpcap (like DSS) how would using the virtual folder monitor help?

[admin]

Hi,

I was thinking that you wanted both the individual frames (for DSS etc) and the master frame (perhaps for live stacking). Since you can't currently save the individual frames when using 'capture flat', the next best thing looked to be capturing the flat (or dark) frames individually (those frames can then be used for DSS), then using those saved frames to make a SharpCap master flat/dark for use with live stacking.

cheers,

Robin

[SteveSD]

So bottom line - I can capture flats, darks, bias etc. using the "Configure Capture" window in SC with the appropriate camera settings and save them as individual files with appropriate names just as I would capture lights. That won't get me masters but it will get me individual files. Is that correct?

[admin]

Yep, absolutely. The 'Capture Flat' and 'Capture Dark' are just convenience things to let you make a master dark/master flat without needing to use any other software - great if you are using things like live stacking, but less useful if you are trying to stack in DSS etc.

cheers,

Robin

[SteveSD]

Thanks for your help, Robin, really appreciate it. Btw, I saw a video tutorial that you gave - can't remember much of it, I don't think it was about SC per se. I think it was more about the revolution in Astrophotography that the newer CMOS and dedicated astrocams have brought about. Some of the technical stuff was a little over my head, but interesting nonetheless.

At the risk of wearing out a welcome, with your permission I'll ask one more question:

So if your goal is more about producing the best astrophotograph as opposed to sharing an EAA session with friends would you use SC mostly as an image and calibration frames capture tool and save the individual frames for stacking / registering in programs like DSS, Sequator, Siril, etc. and then bring that product into Photoshop? Or could you achieve the same results by applying the capture dark and capture flat options in SC and then using the "Save Exactly as Seen" option in SC or some other saving option to produce a single image that you could then bring into Photoshop?

Thanks again for all your help !

Steve

[admin]

Hi Steve,

glad to hear that you liked the talk on CMOS cameras - it was good fun giving that talk and I will actually be giving another talk (this time on Polar Alignment) at a show in a weeks time

Anyway, if you want to produce the very best image then your idea is correct - save the individual frames and stack in DSS or PixInsight or whatever - those applications can do more sophisticated processing since they have the advantage of being able to look at all of the frames at once (whereas SharpCap has to just consider the newly arrived frame and the stack so far when live stacking). Also they can contain algorithms that are more advanced and perhaps slower to run, since they don't need to process in real time.

A good hybrid approach that lots of people use is to live stack (in order to see the image build on screen) but to also select the option to save the raw frames when live stacking - these saved raw frames are just as they come from the camera with no processing applied, so you can then process in DSS etc.

cheers,

Robin