Stacking programs felt like a waste until I tried Siril on a whim

I spent years using Photoshop for stacking and never understood why my nebula shots looked so noisy, then I followed a Siril tutorial from a guy on YouTube and the difference in just one 20 minute session was huge. Has anyone else had better luck with free software after ditching the expensive stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

cora8134d ago

Yeah Siril pulled way more detail out of my budget rig than I expected.

wade_anderson4d ago

Stacking 200 subs in Siril gave me a grainy mess compared to what I got out of DeepSkyStacker.

david_palmer4d ago

That 200 sub count might actually be part of the problem. Siril's stacking algorithm seems to punish you if you don't have enough good signal in each sub to begin with. I had the same issue with 180 second subs of M33 where DSS gave me something clean but Siril turned it into a noise factory. Turned out I needed longer exposures or a higher signal to noise ratio in the individual frames. Try bumping your sub length to 300 seconds or even 400 if your mount can handle it. Siril really starts to shine when each frame has enough data to work with.