View and save as seen a grayscale image of a single color channel?

[mgCatskills]

An odd request, I know.

Anyway, is there a way to generate a good quality grayscale image of a single color channel when live-stacking with an OSC in SharpCap?

Naively, say I want to get a grayscale of the Red channel, I'm wondering if I could:
- Pull down the Green and Blue sliders in the histogram to 0
- Pull the saturation slider to 0
- Adjust remaining grayscale in the mini histogram
- Save exactly as seen

I suppose I can just try it next time I'm observing, but thinking it won't be that simple, figured I'd ask.

Cheers,
Michael

[admin]

Hi,

the feature to get mono images exists, but can't be used at the same time as live stacking. If you are viewing live images from the camera (and I think you are in an 8 bit mode) then you will find 'Red channel to mono' etc in the 'FX' drop down in the toolbar. Select one of those and press the 'save exactly as seen' button in the mini histogram and you have a mono image saved of the appropriate channel.

However, the way SharpCap currently works internally you cannot have one of those options active at the same time as live stacking, so that doesn't really help.

Pulling down the other two sliders doesn't really go far enough to eliminate those channels fully - the full range only gives a factor of about 3.1 increase/decrease, so even if you go max red slider, minimum greed/blue, you are only gaining a boost of the red by a factor of 10 relative to the green/blue. If that is good enough then also wind the saturation down to zero to take the 'mostly red' image and bring it to greyscale. A complex way to get something that still isn't quite right to be honest...

cheers,

Robin

[mgCatskills]

Thanks, Robin.

It's easy enough to deconstruct the saved .png to get to this in Photoshop or Affinity Photo, etc.

My reason for asking was simply to allow folks on the CN EAA forum to post this result as an image (rather than a link). I'm designing the December challenge, and any live-viewed version may be posted under forum rules, whereas a post-processed version may not be.

We'll survive.

Michael

[admin]

Hi Michael,

OK, I see... From that point of view, the approach of +max on one colour channel, -max on other two, saturation at minimum might be good enough - it gives you a monochrome image where 80-90% of the signal comes from one channel - it won't be very different from a true channel extraction to mono.

cheers, and good luck with running the competition.

Robin