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Post by howie1 on Jun 24, 2017 0:36:28 GMT
I posted up a thread on another forum about using Windows Photo Gallery to adjust single images quickly out in the field at night. Not the preferred way to do it for many EAA'ers but offered as yet another tool in the toolkit when doing stuff out in field at night. I mentioned in that post I had also used Lightroom too for that purpose. And also that Lightroom is neat because it can be set to automatically "watch" a folder for new shots to come in, and automatically adjust them and display them with any preset "stretches" and adjustments you want. Curtis on that forum, asked about it so I posted up a video on how to do this automatic "watch and process" with Lightroom (link below).
It doesnt stack hence limited to single frame. That makes me hanker for the old AV cams which can stack a number in-camera to improve SNR before finally outputting an image ... Why? Well, if that nicely stacked frame went to a folder monitored by Lightroom for an auto stretch and anti-vignette (if needed) and great denoising and sharpening tool .... that would be pretty sweet!
Having said that ... there is actually a way! But I need to test it out before posting if it works or not.
So Lightroom auto processing .... Pros: Very, very fast / immediate processing. If you have some saved presets for camera gain/exp time or "conditions" you are viewing under, it is again very, very rapid to hover over each "preset" and instantly see the effect on the shot. You can scroll through your presets and when you see the best image previewed, then just click that preset and all the (many) adjustments you did for that preset are instantly applied. And I mean instantly! Lightroom is also great for your daytime happy snaps pictures well into the future. It can adjust in bulk ... ie 1000 shots for a Milky Way timelapse, adjust the first frame teasing out the Milky Way, then with a couple of mouse clicks tell it to apply those settings to all 1000 or the shots and then tell it to take the whole lot and turn it into a video using a freely available preset. Speaking of videos it even edits videos in LR version 5 and above - although weirdly you edit them in LR5 in the Library module and not the Develop module! Go figure those programmers!!??. It works on Mac too Cons: It costs $179 at Aussies Officeworks Doesnt stack and therefore doesnt derotate each frame either. Has heaps of sliders and wierd layout/confusing when first trying it out!
And a bloke on my channel asked about can it view in fullscreen and the answer is yes ... Shift Tab displays full window size ... so if you go fullscreen mode in Lightroom, then Shift Tab the image is the whole screen. So in the background your acquisition camera control software is running doing its thing, and as soon as it puts a frame into the monitored folder, the first thing you know about that new image having been snapped is your full screen view fully adjusted just appears. Nice n seemless. (Hence how nice it would be if the cams did in-camera stacking!)
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Post by ChrisV on Jun 24, 2017 13:13:50 GMT
Looks like it can do some really nice automated stuff. Imagine if it could stack also !!!
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Post by howie1 on Jun 25, 2017 2:18:29 GMT
Like I said ... I have found a way But I need to test it. More on that later. If it works, its way faster stacking than my old Macbook can do it with DSS/Toaster. So crossing fingers it does actually work out. cheers
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Post by davy on Jun 26, 2017 23:00:40 GMT
Lol, a bit behind in reading posts,, but I seen your post on said forum,,, Oh dear, must be something in the water again, Will be interesting to see your results Howie,, Like most parts in video Astronomy it may suit some and not others but each to there own,, it's a big hobby and I'm shure there will be a few interested folk in your method,, good work finding this out and sharing.
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Post by howie1 on Jun 28, 2017 13:20:26 GMT
Indeed davy! It's a bloomin' pity I chose a 60 sec shot to demo it instead of iso6400 four second shots! And also that I hadn't spent a few more days working on it so it didn't require a person to actually click on a file to cause it to process the image! Like I said somewhere in that post ... it's just another tool in the toolkit. Use it if you want. Don't use it if you don't want! As you said ... suits some not others As you know, I love single 30 sec iso800 because they are the closest thing I can get to one shot, very good fine detail in 45 seconds including the Toaster processing. EAA for me isn't about perfect quality but I do like those nice sharp images. I think the guy on CN took offense cos I said I don't like waiting for 30+ four second frames to stack! Well ... I don't! My aim for EAA with a DSLR is to (somehow) get down to a fast stack of four x 4 sec iso3200 or even iso6400 shots and get just as good detailed shots as I get now. I like that idea a lot. But ... my poor old Macbook is slowing down month by month and stacking now takes Toaster about a minute per frame! It's almost ... well actually it is ... intolerably slow! So I really want to get to something which stacks really fast and then has something easy to tease out the details. Nearly there, but have a bit of testing to do out live in-field at night. Unfortunately, the desire to speed up the processing is also for my hankering to turn to the 'dark' side! Yes ... I'd like to start some proper AP and see how far I can push that. I won't publish those attempts on AVF when I get to it. But it will stretch the ol grey matter and patience I imagine ... so a worthwhile pursuit! I think!? cheers Howie
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Post by Dragon Man on Jun 28, 2017 13:38:43 GMT
It's OK Howie, you can post your AP results in here.
If you go to the home page and look down the Forums list you'll see we have a section called 'OTHER ASTRONOMY IMAGES'. You have used that section before. Elpajare regularly posts his AP results in there.
I'd like to see your results.
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Post by davy on Jun 28, 2017 19:41:34 GMT
Hi Howie/guy's As ken says we're pretty laid back here,, in fact horizontal at times,, we are a video Astronomy forum and in the past we tried to keep it strictly that as we thought that the astrophotography imagers had loads of sites and forums to use,, but in the last few years technology and techniques have changed that much,, I kinda said ah stuff it,, it's a hobby and hobbies are for enjoyment and there are enough heavily starched shirt wearers in the hobby,, we made the section,, other images. We didn't shout it out from the rooftops as we wanted to keep the forum as intended for video astronomers. Big but,,the folk on here are brilliant and we all get on great so why bugger up a good forum by going politically correct were all astronomers at the end of the day and this is a fun forum,,
Yeah we do it differently lol and I think a lot of us like the I don't give a stuff if I'm doing it wrong in your eyes attitude, that you may come across in places.
So you batter in Howie and go with what makes you happy I do both myself and laugh at a lot of the ap techniques used by video astronomers.
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Post by howie1 on Jul 25, 2017 23:45:27 GMT
I posted earlier in this thread about a desire to get into AP. Last Saturday I had the first outing for quite a while with the club out at Lake Wyaralong. There's always heaps of AP'ers there so didnt even take my kit. I just 'pretended' I was doing AP and spent all the time hanging around with the blokes. Outcome was ..... Man, that's boring! Apologies to any AP'ers who read this. So stuff it! I am going to stay with refining short exposures EAA and trying to go deeper with the DSLR's than what I can currently get. Now, other news is that this thread was/is all about using Lightroom (LR) in a fully automated acquisition, import and stretch in Lightroom. It runs very quickly. Almost instantaneously! The video I posted in the first post showed that. But, the missing bit was stacking. But, I now have that working!! So today I will create a video showing how to set it all up. Why try and get Lightroom (LR) doing this when AstroToaster(AT)/DSS will do it now for free? 1. No histogram in AT and due colour blindness its tough to move RGB sliders to WB when you use both modded and unmodded cameras! LR has RGB channel histogram so easy to WB. Just line up the RGB peaks and you are done. 2. On my laptop, AT runs well over 60 seconds if I use 18Mp frames, and even longer if they are RAW format, so I am limited to Small Jpegs so I can 'see' images in 15 secs of AT/DSS processing. LR processes 18Mp RAW images pretty much instantly. 3. In AT you have to adjust settings manually when moving from bright to dim stuff in order to stretch etc and there is often delay when doing those adjustments. LR you can save presets like iso6400sec4, iso6400sec15, etc which apply instantly. You then just hover over any of your saved presets and the image window previews and shows you what it does to your shot. So you simply move the mouse over your presets and when the image looks good, click that preset and it applies instantly. Any further tweaks you do also apply instantly. 4. There are great denoising, sharpening, anti vignetting, anti skyglow masks in LR which (again) apply instantly instead of waiting 10 to 30 seconds to see a result. 5. To undo a change in AT you have to manually move the slider precisely back to where it was and wait for result. LR just click undo (ctrl-z). So for my aim, which is always to get the nicest sharpest details in 30 sec or less, even more easily than AT, it is looking very promising. Including (now) stacking! (Vid to come on stacking!) Downside is LR is $200 Aussie dollars wheras AT/DSS is free! LOL. However, LR will handle all your normal (day and night) photography stuff way out into the future. I've saved precious family moment shots through having LR. I've done timelapse video's in LR too. (the 'apply all adjustments you did to this one frame to all frames' feature is great for that!). Cheers Howie
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Post by howie1 on Jul 27, 2017 23:43:12 GMT
Standyby ... heading to the dam tonight to try out automatic acquisition-to-stacker-to-lightroom-auto-adjustment. I'll do a HD desktop video if it all works out and post that up. And then also make and post up how to set it all up. Bit fiddly, but once setup it is pretty neat.
There still needs to be the proper off-the-web test, because here's my Adobe experience ....
The biggest major hurdle was Adobe! Bunch of s**mbags! These days every single Adobe photo program, they basically force you to do everything off their internet 'Creative Cloud' (CC) system. There are threads on the web, including Adobe's own site FAQ's, which all have info on that but at the same time also saying how to download the standalone version. Trouble is all the information on that, including Adobe's FAQ's and forums, don't work the way the posts describe. They all download the same CC version! Any URL's or hyperlinks on Adobe's site which you previously could use to click on to download the standalone version, have ALL been removed! Even trying use their 24x7 chat is ridiculously tough to do! On their support pages, you can see the three options - call them, live chat 24x7, and FAQ's - down at the bottom of the page. But greyed out! You are forced to first click on which product you have, then select a category of problem you are having, and by the time you click through 3 or 4 mandatory sections after that ... the "call-this-number-for-help", and also the "24x7 chat" options have disappeared!!!! All that is left is the stupid FAQ option!! So you are in an endless loop because all the forums and all the FAQ's with info on the standalone option ALL no longer work! I tried dozens of the links and bits of info - all roads lead to it downloading CC version! Absolutely disgraceful! Finally I jagged the right combination of product and issue to see the 24x7 chat window. I think it was a Profession Photographer Adobe account query about a payment owing! LOL. Typical that only for that issue where they are owed money would they allow the chat window open! S**mbags! After 45 minutes with Vinay something-of-other, I gather (but am still not sure) that the CC download does actually let you operate off the web!?!? But really not sure.
cheers Howie (Aussie)
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