SeeStar Image Processing Tutorial: Download the data and follow along.

[@AbdurAstro]

Hi everyone. I made a new video showing how I process data of the Dumbbell nebula here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jaKxqa18os-FkJYsi=IJrif0VR50IB-fpr It's part of my SeeStar Roundup series (in collaboration with @AllStarTelescope) where viewers send in their data of the object of the month (this month is the Iris Nebula) and I process all of our data together. Hoping my viewers from this channel can join in for next month as well. It's good practice as you get to download the RAW stacked SeeStar image and process along with me.

[@MalcolmThompson-c7l]

As a real novice at 70 years old, this video and your precise explanations has really given me an insight as to not only how but why these steps in processing are necessary. I have owned the Seestar for a few months now, as a new hobby in retirement, I have been blundering my way trying to understand the complex art of image processing. No longer, after minutely following your video, making precise notes, my interest in my Seestar is again "keeping me up at nights" weather here in the UK permitting. Thank you.

[@AbdurAstro]

I am so happy to hear that. I hope you enjoy the SeeStar. Feel free to reach out anytime if you have any questions :)

[@Gianca1965]

Hello there, I'm waiting for my brand new Seestar S30 and starting "studying" how to use it and how to processing images. Your video gave me a very good "path" to follow and I can't wait to apply your "instructions" to my first deep space images!! Thanks a lot for your easy way of explanation, very very helpful!!!🔭🤩

[@citylimitsphoto]

This video has revolutionized my post processing techniques for astrophotography. I process my first successful image while watching this video.

[@AbdurAstro]

That is awesome! Glad it was useful :)

[@txdave2]

This is an outstanding tutorial. You are a very good teacher. The step-by-step process is explained at a perfect pace...not too fast or slow. I just started my astrophotography journey a few months ago. The information in this video is truly helpful.Thank you!

[@AbdurAstro]

Thank you for the kind comments. I always appreciate getting feedback. I hope you enjoy your journey in astrophotography as much as I have :)

[@txdave2]

@@AbdurAstro I just ordered a Seestar through you affiliate link. Should be fun. Thanks!

[@AbdurAstro]

@@txdave2 Thank you for using the affiliate links and supporting my channel. Truly appreciated. I have a few more SeeStar videos coming soon :)

[@Kooch7800]

Thank you for this. This approach works better than the seestar script for me. Thanks for posting

[@AbdurAstro]

Thank you. I didn't see anyone else taking advantage of the drizzle integration option so I made this tutorial. Using drizzle X2 as I do in this video really helps with the SeeStar :)

[@theglobetrevor5212]

Hey it's Trevor from RASC! Excellent video, my Seestar images went from pretty neat to: whoah! Very helpful and informative, easy to follow along and well spoken 👏👏👏

[@AbdurAstro]

Thank you Trevor! Glad it was helpful :)

[@StarPicturesMiami]

I have started a new playlist for Siril editing of Seestar images. And your video is the first one! I have been satisfied up until now without editing my Seestar images. But after viewing some of the incredible images I've seen other users produce I want to learn this program. Thank you for making it so easy to follow along.

[@AbdurAstro]

Really glad I could help. Wishing you clear skies! :)

[@tarkovclipz3779]

Excellent tutorial!! My Triangulum Galaxy image now has it's true colors but it isn't overdone at all! I appreciate you taking the time to show us!

[@AbdurAstro]

Thank you! :)

[@bhattvd1]

Excellent tutorial, Abdur! One of the best I have seen on Siril!!

[@AbdurAstro]

Thank you! Glad it was helpful :)

[@uexpectme2talk]

Just got my seestar s50 . Found your video. Thank you so much

[@billpardue3410]

Excellent tutorial! You may want to note that (at least on an older computer), running the script can take a while. It took 43 minutes for me (on a 6 yr old gaming laptop), and at times I wondered if the program had stopped because the console wasn't showing any messages. However, I just let it keep running and it eventually got through it. I was doing 147 subs of M14.

[@AbdurAstro]

Hi Bill. Thank you for that information. It didn't take too long on my computer but I am using an SSD and a fairly powerful processor. But that is very useful information and I will be sure to add that to my future videos so anyone processing their images know how long it might take. If I am processing a very large stack of images (hundreds of large images totaling dozens of hours), I often just let me computer run the script while I go away and do other things and in some cases I just let me computer run overnight so everything is ready in the morning. Have a great day :)

[@JimGriskewicz]

Thanks for getting back to me! I will make any data I gather available if needed

[@JimGriskewicz]

Thank you for a great tutorial! knowing what order to apply the imaging tools helps a lot! -Jim

[@AbdurAstro]

Glad it was useful Jim. Clear skies :)

[@zuskaba1611]

Exremely useful video! Thank you very much! My result with my seestar image is really awesome!

[@AbdurAstro]

Always happy to hear. You are very welcome :)

[@kennyw871]

I wonder why Seestar doesn't use TIFF format. The next best thing is how to process FITS files in Siril, whih this video is beyond excellent to guide the way. Thanks and two thumbs up.

[@flexplexico99]

Thank you! :)

[@joelireland5477]

My S50 is on the way , can't wait to produce some of these myself

[@AbdurAstro]

Awesome! You'll love it :)

[@compadrechuma]

Very clear and helpful. Thank you.

[@jeffwyton3922]

Excellent tutorial Abdur! Thanks for posting this, very useful. I would also be interested in a tutorial using Gimp functionality for final processing

[@AbdurAstro]

Thank you Jeff. I tend to do all the processing in PixInsight or SIRIL (for anyone who doesn't have PixInsight) but I will try to make one soon which shows final post-processing steps in GIMP :)

[@PhilippeNoth]

Thank you for the very useful video; it made me subscribe. One topic that would interest me is how to annotate DSO objects in Siril. I use PixInsight myself, but a friend of mine with whom I share the Seestar uses free software. I intend to show him how to achieve the same results in Siril, using your video as a guide.

[@AbdurAstro]

Hi there. Thank you for subscribing. To annotate an image in Siril, you have to know at least one object in the image. For example in the image I was processing, I know M13 is in the image so I would use the plate solve option under the hamburger menu at the top right, then click Image Information and then Image Plate Solver. Then type in M13. If you already did color calibration as I did in this video at kzbin.info/www/bejne/d6CbYmWQeKuCqq8 then you can skip that step as Siril would already do a plate solve during the color calibration step. Then in the bottom bar in Siril, click on the icon that looks like a yellow galaxy inside a white circle. That will annotate objects in the image. To save your image with the annotations, click on the camera icon next to the save icon at the top right in Siril. Siril can identify most major objects but the default catalogue might not be as thorough as PixInsight. To get additional catalogues (if Siril couldn't tag the object you wanted), you would have to follow the steps in this Siril guide: siril.readthedocs.io/en/latest/astrometry/annotations.html

[@michaeledmonds3027]

Wonderful.... This was the easiest to follow Siril tutorial to date for me. I'm anxious to add drizzle as a processing script to Siril. How did you figure this out, are you part of the Siril team? Thanks again, I just subscribed, Michael

[@AbdurAstro]

Thank you Michael. That means a lot to me. I am not part of the Siril team and I usually used PixInsight for my data processing. However I had noticed that many of my friends and subscribers didn't have PixInsight so I spent a lot of time reviewing all the official Siril resources. And based on everything I learned there, I tried to make an easy to follow Siril Tutorial.

[@stevetasker3487]

Great video mate. Really helpful and you've got a great delivery style too. I'm waiting for delivery of my s50. I wonder, would the 'drizzle' script work when stacking the mosaic images that the recent firmware update has allowed?

[@AbdurAstro]

I plan to test that out and make a video about it in the next little while. I want to try the Siril Nightly Build version as the Drizzle implementation in that is much better (like what PixInsight uses) than the implementation in the official stable version of Siril. Stay tuned :)

[@pgadams1]

Excellent tutorial. Thanks.

[@AbdurAstro]

Thanks for watching! :)

[@electrichawk1]

Hi, thank you for the clear explanation. But my image seems to have a slight rotation to the right (I used your fit-files to follow the video because I have my SeeStar now for over a week and the sky just won’t clear up to use it long enough to get a good picture or amount of pictures for stacking 😢) as opposed to your image. Am I doing something wrong? Or do I need to take extra steps to avoid this rotation?

[@AbdurAstro]

The rotation might be due to a setting in the Siril Plate Solve screen. Could you upload (or drag and drop) your image here so I can see what it looks like: drive.google.com/drive/folders/1aC1wGgt04Br_pnm6lT0xWO8l3f9_rPcf?usp=sharing I might be able to offer some suggestions :)

[@gwtomsic]

Excellent. Thanks.

[@larrychristianson2244]

Terrific. Thank you for teaching us these skills.

[@diogenes505]

I know a 50mm fast scope is less than optimal for planetary imaging. That being said have you ever had any success or improvement post processing planetary images?

[@AbdurAstro]

The focal length is too short for any real planetary imaging unfortunately. However, I did have good results with Lunar and Solar (with the included filter). Like this one here: facebook.com/share/p/14pQYLhPNU/

[@michael.mcshan]

Thank you very much for posting this tutorial. I am still learning what the SeeStar can do, and this information is very helpful.

[@AbdurAstro]

Glad to help :)

[@marinabrennecke5495]

I want to try this but when I connect my seestar with my laptop i see only this: my works, but completely empty without pictures. All my pictures i can only see in the Seestar app. Why is "my works" without content?

[@AbdurAstro]

You might have to enable the option in the SeeStar app to save individual frames. Go to the Advanced Features tab in the app and see if "Save each frame in enhancing" is turned On.

[@marinabrennecke5495]

Yes, it is turned on.

[@marinabrennecke5495]

Now it's running, thanks a lot.

[@AbdurAstro]

@@marinabrennecke5495 Glad to hear it :)

[@ahiemstra]

Have you tried the new drizzle of Siril v1.3? I found that with your dataset, the green channel is much sharper than without drizzle, but the blue is worse and the red is MUCH worse. So I ended up Splitting the channels for both processes (with drizzling and without) and then taking the G channel from the stacked drizzled image set and the R and B channels from the normally stacked image. The result might be an improvement to what you showed?

[@AbdurAstro]

I haven't tried it yet but I plan to as soon as I have some free time. I've been busy with a few other projects lately. My process for SeeStar images has changed significantly since I made this video so I will be making an updated video. At the time I just wanted to make a super simple video for beginners :)

[@RadioGunk100]

Does this work for Mac as well?

[@AbdurAstro]

Hi. It will work just as well with a Mac :) I have started putting in some hints about how some shortcuts are different on Mac than Windows in my newer SeeStar video Series here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jaKxqa18os-FkJYsi=IJrif0VR50IB-fpr

[@saikatpramanick]

hi ..i just following the steps but at last it says script execution is failed

[@matttrowsdale2804]

Excellent tutorial, however, is the post-processed picture better? It's difficult to tell as they are not cropped the same? It's certainly a different colour - whether that's good or bad I'm not sure? I am going to try some post-processing but have to say I'm blown away by the results straight out of the seestar. Also, I've seen some people's pictures that have been run through up to 10 different apps and, to me, looks like they've either lost a lot of integrity, or totally over-cooked the colours? Anyway, I thank you very much for your clear and detailed guide.

[@AbdurAstro]

Hi. The post processed picture has a resolution of 3840x2160 while the original image had a resolution of 1920x1080. I used drizzle integration (that's why I modified the script) to increase resolution. That is why the processed picture looks bigger even though they are both cropped at 100%. The SeeStar is an amazing tool but you can definitely improve the results by processing on a computer. I only used one app in this case (SIRIL).

[@giannivivona6910]

Hi everyone. I followed this tutorial step by step, downloading the files as indicated. However, when I performed the color calibration with the exact same parameters as the video, the image became completely black and I could not continue. How can I fix this?

[@wildvoxel]

This was great, but I have encountered a problem saving to TIFF. When I save it as a Tiff, it is extremely noisy and faded, saving it as a jpeg, it comes out just like it does in the final processing window. Any idea why the Tiff file save goes astray? using the default Tiff settings.

[@AbdurAstro]

Hi there. I am sure we can figure out what is going on. After you save it as a TIFF, what program are you using to open it?

[@wildvoxel]

@@AbdurAstro Photoshop, or Lightroom

[@scottmackenzie3761]

If I were to use GraXert to help denoise the image, at what step would I do it?

[@AbdurAstro]

Hi Scott. I made this video on another channel going over my step by step process for using GraXpert to do background extraction, denoise, and deconvolve. Make sure you use the version I posted in the description of the video :)

[@rmollise]

ON EDIT: I WAS LOADING THE WRONG SCRIPT ALL IS WELL NOW. Thanks for the tutorial, but I simply cannot get the script to run. It fails with: 16:27:33: Running command: requires 16:27:33: # Convert Bias Frames to .fit files 16:27:33: Running command: cd 16:27:33: 'biases' No such file or directory 16:27:33: Error in line 26 ('cd'): generic error. 16:27:33: Exiting batch processing. 16:27:33: Setting CWD (Current Working Directory) to 'C:\SeeStar\Siril Stuff\Scripts\NGC 1499' 16:27:33: Script execution failed.

[@Dutchastrochris]

Siril made a special script for the Seestar. Check the site. The resulting fits file will have additional data in the resulting image file like exposure time and sensortemp…😇

[@AbdurAstro]

Hi there. Thank you for the heads up. I am aware of the SeeStar specific script but the reason I didn't use that was because it doesn't allow using drizzle integration. Due to the fairly low resolution of the SeeStar (1920x1080), it can benefit significantly from using drizzle integration on most targets). I guess one could modify the SeeStar script to add drizzle integration as well like I did with the script in this video.

[@Dutchastrochris]

@@AbdurAstroI agree!

[@jacknetzke2516]

I have this... # Align lights register pp_light -2pass seqapplyreg pp_light -filter-round=2.5k and I don't seem to work around it without an error It's a newer version I suspect

[@AbdurAstro]

Thank you for the heads up on that. I'll have to take a look at it and see if I can replicate the error.

[@seanobrien779]

So this is not "real" HST Drizzle (APP/ PI), it's upscaling. You need to be running Siril Alpha for HST Drizzle (at this time). And Drizzle is applied in the seqapplyreg process rather than the register process.

[@santiagomadruga4298]

Very clear and good tutorial.

[@Blf2150455]

This may be the rookiest question ever but once you magnify the image in the siril display window, how do you move it to see the center or the edges. I dont see any scroll bars. Is this a bug?

[@AbdurAstro]

Any question is a good question because that is how we learn. Siril zooms in on wherever your mouse is positioned when you start zooming in. You can move the image around after magnifying it by holding down the mouse wheel and moving it around. You can also hold down CTRL on your keyboard and then move the image around with your left mouse button.

[@Blf2150455]

@@AbdurAstro DUH - I should have been able to figure that our myself. This really is a great video and having the sample lights makes all the difference. Thanks for making it and the quick response.

[@AbdurAstro]

@@Blf2150455 You are very welcome :)

[@terrypun]

Nothing in this video worked for me.

[@AbdurAstro]

I am sorry to hear that. Were you not able to stack the image either as I did in the first few steps?

[@santiagomadruga4298]

Something unclear to me. Color calibration shouldn't be after stretching to fix errors in color channels?

[@AbdurAstro]

Stretching shouldn't introduce errors in the color channels. The creators of Siril recommend doing color calibration right after background extraction.

[@JimGriskewicz]

If you ever want seestar raw files (bortle 6.1), glad to share them.-Jim

[@AbdurAstro]

Thank you Jim. For October, we will be imaging NGC 891 (The Silver Sliver Galaxy). We'll all combine out data and see what we get. You are always welcome to join. I'll share the link for uploading any data later :)

[@jaracgos]

The thumbnail looks like you just cropped the image

[@AbdurAstro]

I think it might have looked better on my 55" 4K monitor. I should re-do the thumbnail sometime. I am planning to make an updated video using some of the newer ways I do things now so I'll make sure the thumbnail does a better job for that one :)

[@Knifeprject]

Amazing

[@AbdurAstro]

Thank you! :)