Camera colors suddenly changed... SharpCap reset

[FXModels]

Hi Robin,
Something happened to SharpCap and when I went into it all my previous settings were gone and I had to start again. I did that and i can image fine but... I amusing the zwo183MCPro and whereas I was getting very nice blues like in the Dumbell Nebula, I am now getting those blues showing up as full on green. Too green for OIII. I am looking for that Teal color that I had before SharpCap reset its settings.

So the question: Did SharpCap change some setting somewhere causing the color response to change radically somehow? I really liked the propler OIII color and now its just green.

Let me know if SC has anything to do with this. If not I will have to look elsewhere but it was sudden and after sharpcap settings reset on me for some reason.

Thank you,
Marc
SkyTour LiveStream

[admin]

Hi Marc,

nothing has changed that I know of in SharpCap that would do this, but there are some settings you should check to see if they are no longer at the values you would expect

* Colour balance settings in the panel on the right - the 'neutral' settings for ZWO cameras are for both of the settings to be set to 50, but that does tend to give a rather green image - my recommendation is to leave these at the neutral settings and fix the colour in post-processing or live stacking, but that's not to everyone's taste.

* Background subtraction settings in the panel on the right - if your light pollution has a noticable colour (often orange) then that can make it hard to properly adjust out the colour balance in later processing. Using background subtraction will remove the colour cast in the background, leaving a largely neutral background, which can help

* Colour adjustment sliders to the right of the live stacking histogram - there's a reset button just below these to reset them to defaults, but they can be used to tame the green cast by dropping the green slider a bit and raising the blue.

It's possible that you used some of these settings in the past to get the look you liked and then the settings got changed for some other reason and are now at different values.

hope this helps,

Robin

[FXModels]

Hi Robin,

Is there any kind of color settings I need to look at to help figure out why the color response on the camera is now so different? I know what you said below but the sliders are for the image thats live... That wont affect the image captured by the camera correct?

[admin]

Hi,

if you have previously saved images from SharpCap, you will find a 'capturesettings.txt' file alongside each image. Have a look at one of those files for a recently saved image (showing the different colours) and one from before the problem. Hopefully you will be able to identify different values in the two that might be related to the colour change.

When making normal captures, the capturesettings file contains all the camera settings in use at the time the image was captured. If you are using deep sky live stacking then the file additionally contains all the live stacking adjustment settings, so everything relevant should be recorded.

Feel free to post the two files here if you are struggling to identify the important changes between them.

cheers,

Robin

[FXModels]

Hi Robin,
I checked the capture file for each of these live stacks, the one with the green M27 and the one with the proper teal M27. I found this difference present in the Teal M27 file for the CA Reduction...

CA Reduction/Synthetic Blue=Deep Sky 1 (Blue=Green+Clip(Green-Red))

In the green incorrect M27 CA Reduction = OFF...

Could this make a difference? I am reaching here... the colors did not shift until SC started with a reset somehow. That is another issue. How and why did it reset all my settings? I had to get dark and flat frames (which are the same in both images) and apply a Flip Horizontal again and set the RAW16 color space again and so forth.

Let me know what you think!
Thanks,
Marc
STLS

[FXModels]

Here is the M27 capture settings file for the live stack of the M27 Teal (Correct) first followed by the same for the incorrect green image

[ZWO ASI183MC Pro]
CameraSerialNumber=1829D2032A010900, via USB2
FrameType=Light
Debayer Preview=On
Pan=0
Tilt=0
Output Format=PNG files (*.png)(Auto)
Binning=1
Capture Area=5496x3672
Colour Space=RAW16
Exposure/Gain Shift=0
Hardware Binning=Off
High Speed Mode=On
Turbo USB=80
Flip=Horiz
Frame Rate Limit=Maximum
Gain=250
Exposure=20.000s
Timestamp Frames=Off
White Bal (B)=44
White Bal (R)=51
Brightness=50
Cooler Power=100
Temperature=-11
Target Temperature=-30
Cooler=On
Auto Exp Max Gain=300
Auto Exp Max Exp MS=30000
Auto Exp Target Brightness=100
Mono Bin=Off
CA Reduction/Synthetic Blue=Deep Sky 1 (Blue=Green+Clip(Green-Red))
Mask over exposed pixels=Off
Flip (after dark/flat)=None
Trail Width=3
Minimum Trail Length=100
Trail Detection Sensitivity=9
Remove Satellite Trails=Remove
Background Subtraction=Linear Gradient Removal
Planet/Disk Stabilization=Off
Banding Threshold=10
Banding Suppression=0
Apply Flat=C:\Users\fxmod\OneDrive\Desktop\SharpCap Captures\2023-09-06\Capture\flats\MasterFlat_19_11_21.png
Hot Pixel Sensitivity=5
Subtract Dark=C:\Users\fxmod\OneDrive\Desktop\SharpCap Captures\darks\ZWO ASI183MC Pro\RAW16@5496x3672\25.0s\gain_200\MasterDark_10_frames_-16.0C_2023-11-08T01_10_21.png
DisplayStretchEnable=1
NegativeDisplay=0
Display Black Point=0
Display MidTone Point=0.5
Display White Point=1
Notes=
MicroTouch Focuser1=49916
Focuser Temperature=30.1875
POTH Hub=RA=19:57:42.0,Dec=+22:44:49 (JNOW)
TimeStamp=2024-10-10T03:30:10.3552754Z
SharpCapVersion=4.1.12196.0
TotalExposure(s)=900
StackedFrames=45
LiveStack.SaveRawFrames=None
LiveStack.AlignFrames=True
LiveStack.Derotate=True
LiveStack.StarsForAlignment=15
LiveStack.StarDetection.Sensitivity=75
LiveStack.StarDetection.SuppressHotPixels=True
LiveStack.AlignAutoDisabled=False
LiveStack.ReduceNoiseAmount=0.5
LiveStack.BrightnessLimit=95
LiveStack.FilterBrightness=False
LiveStack.AutoBrightnessLimit=True
LiveStack.FWHMLimit=8.081621
LiveStack.FilterFWHM=True
LiveStack.WarningThreshold=5
LiveStack.StackingMode=0
LiveStack.SigmaClipInitialCount=5
LiveSack.SigmaClipThreshold=2.6984124
LiveStack.SigmaClipLowLimit=1.005291
LiveStack.AutoSaveReset=False
LiveStack.AutoSaveResetMinutes=5
LiveStack.LogarithmicHistogramHorizontalAxis=True
LiveStack.AutoSave=False
LiveStack.BlackLevel=2.1
LiveStack.WhiteLevel=99.1125
LiveStack.MidLevel=4.488513
LiveStack.WBB.db=0.6596746
LiveStack.WBG.db=0
LiveStack.WBR.db=0.3249183
LiveStack.Saturation=3
AutoStretch.Strength=2
LiveStack.StarDetection.FaintStarsOptimization=False
LiveStack.StretchMode=4
LiveStack.CometStarRemovalSize=80
LiveStack.AlignOnComet=False
LiveStack.CometThreshold=0.05000001
LiveStack.StartOnClear=True
LiveStack.AutoDisableDisplayStretch=False
LiveStack.SaveStackLog=True
LiveStacking.MaxStarSize=50
LiveStacking.NewStackOnReopenAfter60s=True
LiveStacking.Guiding.RequireGuiding=False
LiveStacking.Guiding.AutoDither=False
LiveStacking.Guiding.ShortExposuresWhileAdjusting=True
LiveStacking.Guiding.CountSecondsOrFrames=1
LiveStacking.Guiding.AdjustmentInterval=5
LiveStacking.Guiding.Enabled=False
LiveStacking.Guiding.RecenterEnabled=False
LiveStacking.Guiding.RecenterMovementThreshold=20


=============== Incorrect M27 color capture settings below=========================

[ZWO ASI183MC Pro]
CameraSerialNumber=1829D2032A010900, via USB2
FrameType=Light
Debayer Preview=On
Pan=0
Tilt=0
Output Format=PNG files (*.png)(Auto)
Binning=1
Capture Area=5496x3672
Colour Space=RAW16
Exposure/Gain Shift=0
Hardware Binning=Off
High Speed Mode=On
Turbo USB=80
Flip=Horiz
Frame Rate Limit=Maximum
Gain=150
Exposure=25.000s
Timestamp Frames=Off
White Bal (B)=44
White Bal (R)=51
Brightness=50
Cooler Power=100
Temperature=-16.5
Target Temperature=-20
Cooler=On
Auto Exp Max Gain=300
Auto Exp Max Exp MS=30000
Auto Exp Target Brightness=100
Mono Bin=Off
CA Reduction/Synthetic Blue=Off
Mask over exposed pixels=Off
Flip (after dark/flat)=None
Trail Width=3
Minimum Trail Length=100
Trail Detection Sensitivity=9
Remove Satellite Trails=Off
Background Subtraction=Linear Gradient Removal
Planet/Disk Stabilization=Off
Banding Threshold=10
Banding Suppression=0
Apply Flat=C:\Users\fxmod\OneDrive\Desktop\SharpCap Captures\2023-09-06\Capture\flats\MasterFlat_19_11_21.png
Hot Pixel Sensitivity=5
Subtract Dark=C:\Users\fxmod\OneDrive\Desktop\SharpCap Captures\darks\ZWO ASI183MC Pro\RAW16@5496x3672\25.0s\gain_200\MasterDark_10_frames_-16.0C_2023-11-08T01_10_21.png
DisplayStretchEnable=1
NegativeDisplay=0
Display Black Point=0
Display MidTone Point=0.5
Display White Point=1
Notes=
MicroTouch Focuser1=49656
Focuser Temperature=24.9375
POTH Hub=RA=20:01:32.0,Dec=+22:43:02 (JNOW)
TimeStamp=2024-10-16T03:02:28.2232812Z
SharpCapVersion=4.1.12196.0
TotalExposure(s)=75
StackedFrames=3
LiveStack.SaveRawFrames=None
LiveStack.AlignFrames=True
LiveStack.Derotate=True
LiveStack.StarsForAlignment=15
LiveStack.StarDetection.Sensitivity=75
LiveStack.StarDetection.SuppressHotPixels=True
LiveStack.AlignAutoDisabled=False
LiveStack.ReduceNoiseAmount=0.5
LiveStack.BrightnessLimit=0
LiveStack.FilterBrightness=False
LiveStack.AutoBrightnessLimit=True
LiveStack.FWHMLimit=8.324863
LiveStack.FilterFWHM=True
LiveStack.WarningThreshold=5
LiveStack.StackingMode=0
LiveStack.SigmaClipInitialCount=5
LiveSack.SigmaClipThreshold=2.6984124
LiveStack.SigmaClipLowLimit=1.005291
LiveStack.AutoSaveReset=True
LiveStack.AutoSaveResetMinutes=5
LiveStack.LogarithmicHistogramHorizontalAxis=True
LiveStack.AutoSave=False
LiveStack.BlackLevel=1.963945
LiveStack.WhiteLevel=95.3
LiveStack.MidLevel=8.920677
LiveStack.WBB.db=0.41748753
LiveStack.WBG.db=-0.1
LiveStack.WBR.db=1.3150281
LiveStack.Saturation=3
AutoStretch.Strength=2
LiveStack.StarDetection.FaintStarsOptimization=False
LiveStack.StretchMode=4
LiveStack.CometStarRemovalSize=80
LiveStack.AlignOnComet=False
LiveStack.CometThreshold=0.05000001
LiveStack.StartOnClear=True
LiveStack.AutoDisableDisplayStretch=False
LiveStack.SaveStackLog=True
LiveStacking.MaxStarSize=50
LiveStacking.NewStackOnReopenAfter60s=True
LiveStacking.Guiding.RequireGuiding=False
LiveStacking.Guiding.AutoDither=False
LiveStacking.Guiding.ShortExposuresWhileAdjusting=True
LiveStacking.Guiding.CountSecondsOrFrames=1
LiveStacking.Guiding.AdjustmentInterval=5
LiveStacking.Guiding.Enabled=False
LiveStacking.Guiding.RecenterEnabled=False
LiveStacking.Guiding.RecenterMovementThreshold=20

[FXModels]

Hi Robin,
I tentatively figured it out thanks to your pointing me in a good direction. I opened a test camera 1 (DeepSky) and brought in a dumbbell nebula image. I went to CA Reduction and noted that it was off... The dumbell was green. I turned on DeepSky1 and pow! It was back to the blue but not the teal of OIII... so I tried DeepSky2 and holy cow that is EXACTLY the right color for OIII!!

This was withTest Camera 1(Deep Sky)

I hope that the CA Reduction parameter is available for the ZWO cameras... ? I dont recall seeing if for the 183MC Pro...

[admin]

Hi,

glad that you have tracked down the cause of the colours changing. The CA Reduction feature is relatively new in SharpCap (last few months), so maybe you were using an older version of SharpCap that didn't have that feature when using the other camera. Anyway, it's available in all cameras.

My hypothesis on *how* it changed is that you had SharpCap set up to either restore the previous camera settings or load a capture profile when the camera is opened. If there is an error while trying to do either of those things, SharpCap turns off the auto restore/profile load - otherwise the risk would be that *every* time you tried to open the camera it would try to load the settings that caused a problem, crash, repeat. Just recently I added a new change that shows a notification warning you if this disabling of settings restore happens, but that was in the last few weeks.

For reference, the CA reduction feature makes a 'synthetic' blue channel via one of a few options - if you have an achromat that gives nasty haloes in the blue then it's a way to avoid that, but it can also help with colour balance in other situations.

cheers,

Robin