Stacking and Processing RAW Files
My health has been rather lousy lately so today is another "down day" of inactivity while my health recovers.
I've been rather frustrated and anxious lately about accomplishing nothing around the house to the point that my doctors are a bit concerned because they feel that I am having some heart issues. I'm convinced it is just frustration and a bit of anxiety causing these relatively minor heart issues. Unfortunately, the more I have to sit around recovering, the more frustrated and anxious I get. There is a lot I want to do and accomplish but my health is refusing to cooperate. And, to be honest, we've been spending far too much time at the hospital and medical appointments. I'm frustrated.
So, as I sit here again while my health recovers, I've decided to revisit the moon images from the other night.
I shot this series of images in two formats... a compressed jpeg format for simplicity and a RAW format for more detail. I always shoot both jpegs and RAW files but the RAW files are huge so I rarely process these files unless there is a good reason for it (usually the jpegs are good enough) but these moon images are providing me a very good reason to process the RAW files.
The moon has a lot of fine detail that tends to get lost in compressed jpeg image files. Things get a little "crunchy" and the files fall apart far more easily when processing jpeg files too. The RAW files are deeper, smoother, more detailed, and there is a lot of latitude in processing. This morning was the perfect time to see what I had in these RAW moon images.
It is almost impossible to see the difference between this image, above, and the images I posted the other night because these blog-sized images are only around 2 megapixels in size. The original file of this image above is really 96 megapixels in size and takes up a whole gigabyte of hard drive space. That is a big file with a lot of data in it!
The more I looked at my first images that I edited in jpeg format the other night, the more the perfectionist in me was disappointed with them. I was seeing all sorts of typical jpeg artifacts due to file compression that is automatically applied to make jpeg files smaller. This image above is far superior... smoother... more detail... and crisp without being "crunchy".
Also, I was so focused on looking at the detail in the moon on that first night that I forgot to flip the image, left to right, so it is portrayed in the correct orientation! My telescope reverses the image and I should be reversing it again in post-processing to put it back into the correct orientation. Thanks, Perry, for pointing that out to me. I was so focused on other things that I didn't even realize those first photos were backwards!
As long as I can remember to not make the same mistakes next time I get out there with my telescope and camera, I should be able to capture some very impressive images!
I've been rather frustrated and anxious lately about accomplishing nothing around the house to the point that my doctors are a bit concerned because they feel that I am having some heart issues. I'm convinced it is just frustration and a bit of anxiety causing these relatively minor heart issues. Unfortunately, the more I have to sit around recovering, the more frustrated and anxious I get. There is a lot I want to do and accomplish but my health is refusing to cooperate. And, to be honest, we've been spending far too much time at the hospital and medical appointments. I'm frustrated.
So, as I sit here again while my health recovers, I've decided to revisit the moon images from the other night.
I shot this series of images in two formats... a compressed jpeg format for simplicity and a RAW format for more detail. I always shoot both jpegs and RAW files but the RAW files are huge so I rarely process these files unless there is a good reason for it (usually the jpegs are good enough) but these moon images are providing me a very good reason to process the RAW files.
The moon has a lot of fine detail that tends to get lost in compressed jpeg image files. Things get a little "crunchy" and the files fall apart far more easily when processing jpeg files too. The RAW files are deeper, smoother, more detailed, and there is a lot of latitude in processing. This morning was the perfect time to see what I had in these RAW moon images.
It is almost impossible to see the difference between this image, above, and the images I posted the other night because these blog-sized images are only around 2 megapixels in size. The original file of this image above is really 96 megapixels in size and takes up a whole gigabyte of hard drive space. That is a big file with a lot of data in it!
The more I looked at my first images that I edited in jpeg format the other night, the more the perfectionist in me was disappointed with them. I was seeing all sorts of typical jpeg artifacts due to file compression that is automatically applied to make jpeg files smaller. This image above is far superior... smoother... more detail... and crisp without being "crunchy".
Also, I was so focused on looking at the detail in the moon on that first night that I forgot to flip the image, left to right, so it is portrayed in the correct orientation! My telescope reverses the image and I should be reversing it again in post-processing to put it back into the correct orientation. Thanks, Perry, for pointing that out to me. I was so focused on other things that I didn't even realize those first photos were backwards!
As long as I can remember to not make the same mistakes next time I get out there with my telescope and camera, I should be able to capture some very impressive images!
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