Figured out a stacking trick for deep-sky shots that actually cut my processing time in half

I was spending hours trying to stack my Orion Nebula shots in DSS, but last month I tried just picking the 20 best frames instead of dumping all 80 in there. The stack came out way sharper and I finished in like 15 minutes. Anyone else found that being picky with your subs works better than using everything?

2 comments

2 Comments

terry_thomas1d ago

Quality over quantity every time... I used to dump 60 frames of Andromeda into DSS and the result was always kinda mushy. Now I just grab the 15 or 20 sharpest ones with round stars and it pops way more. Less time culling bad frames too.

clairem471d ago

@terry_thomas hit on the real issue there. Another angle nobody talks about is how your calibration frames can actually mess things up if they're not perfect. I quit using darks altogether and just stuck with bias and flats, my stacks got cleaner. The darks were introducing noise at different temperatures than the lights. Also found that stacking in 16-bit instead of 32-bit gives sharper details for bright objects like Orion. It's counterintuitive but the integer math seems to handle the data better. And yeah, what @terry_thomas said about picking the top 15-20 frames is spot on, that's the biggest time saver and quality booster there is.