Stacked my first astrophoto against a pro's and it hurt my pride

I spent like 4 hours stacking and editing a shot of the Andromeda Galaxy in DeepSkyStacker (you know, the free one). Then I saw my buddy's result from PixInsight and it was night and day. His colors popped way more and the noise was almost gone. I used 120 light frames at 60 seconds each and he used 90. But his software somehow pulled out way more detail. Is it really just the tool or am I missing some secret setting? Has anyone else made the switch and felt the pain of 30 hours wasted?

2 comments

2 Comments

nathana481d agoTop Commenter

120 frames at 60 seconds is a solid dataset man. The thing with PixInsight is it's not just one magic button, it's the whole workflow from calibration through to deconvolution and all those noise reduction tools. I spent a good year on DeepSkyStacker and Photoshop and thought I was doing alright, then a buddy let me try his PixInsight trial. The difference in the gradient removal alone was night and day. I could pull out dust lanes that were just buried in my old stacks. You probably aren't missing a secret setting, but PixInsight's processing tools are just way more powerful for pulling out that faint signal. Your frames are good, you just need the software to match what your gear can do.

victor_adams1d ago

HOLY crap, a whole year on DeepSkyStacker? That's dedication man, I would've lost my mind after a month of that.