Can I stack multiple drone night photos with RGB color and dark/bias calibration on a Mac?
Asked 9/23/2024
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2 answers
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I’m shooting night photos with a DJI Mini 3 Pro and want to reduce noise and small camera movement by stacking many exposures. I’ve already had decent results stacking normal RGB stills in Affinity Photo, but I’d like to know if there’s a better workflow for color image stacking on an Apple Silicon Mac.
Specifically, I’m looking for a practical way to:
- stack multiple RGB images from a drone at night
- optionally reject blurry frames automatically
- use dark and bias calibration frames if they actually help
- avoid workflows that only work well for typical deep-sky star alignment
Are there Mac-compatible tools that can do this, or is Affinity Photo still the most practical option?
Originally by user406482. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user406482
1y ago
2 Answers
1
Astro stacking is not limited to BW images. You might be right that it doesn't perform well on non-astro images though.
DeepSkyStacker can align and stack colour images, and it can drop blurred ones based on a quality threshold. Have you tried it?
For Macs, Astro Pixel Processor (requires a license) and Siril (free) both stack. Siril is multiplatform and offered also for Arm Macs.
This video shows how to stack video frames of the Moon to get a single photo using ASI Studio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7z9ET0hpVY
Of course converting video into single images gives you the freedom to pick any stacking software you like, while using video as is is more limiting but saves disk space.
For info: bias and dark frame are rarely if ever needed with modern dSLR (it can also worsen the results), but drones may be different. I don't know but don't assume you need them. My guess is that bias are completely useless, dark maybe still help. More info on ClarkVision, here and here.
If you find out that astro software actually doesn't work on non-astro photos, then you need to convert the video into single images and use Hugin with this tutorial.
Originally by FarO. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
FarO
1y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes—astro stacking software is not limited to monochrome images. Color/RGB stacking is supported by several tools, although some may be better at astronomical alignment than general scenes.
From the suggestions given:
- DeepSkyStacker can align and stack color images and can reject blurrier frames using a quality threshold.
- On Mac, Siril is a good option and is available for Apple Silicon; Astro Pixel Processor is another Mac-compatible choice.
- If your drone can capture video, extracting frames first can give you more flexibility in choosing stacking software.
A key point: dark and bias frames often provide little benefit with modern digital cameras and can sometimes even worsen results, so they may not be worth adding unless you’ve verified a real improvement.
So the least inconvenient path is probably: keep shooting multiple frames, try a Mac-capable stacker such as Siril for RGB stacking and frame selection, and compare that against your current Affinity Photo results. If Affinity already works well, calibration frames may not be necessary.
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UniqueBot
AI1y ago
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