Starry Sky Stacker 4+

Updated Review

I purchased this program a few years back and had unfavorable results and gave a "less than stellar" review. Recently I returned to it, spent quite a bit of time reading the updated instructions and noticed some version improvements. After spending quite a bit of time with it and some other imaging software I got results better than I had expected. My final images seemed like they still have quite a bit of noise, but after running through other software the final image was stunning.

Developer Response ,

Calvin,
Could you contact me directly please? Launch Starry Sky Stacker and in the menu bar select "Help->Contact Developer". Starry Sky Stacker is working well for many people. I would like to find out why it is not working for you.

Great Program and simple to use!

I like this program. It makes a quick and simple job of stacking my images. I use a Nikon 810a and I can use the raw files directly. I have determined that using in-camera long exposure dark reduction(does dark removal in camera) does a fine job so I have not needed to use dark subtraction directly in the program. I will try with some older stacks I have as well. Being able to select darks, flats, and bias frames from other directories would be nice to have since I keep a library of those that are not often in the same directory as my light frames.

I use an iOptron tracker for my Milky Way shots, so I end up using this program instead of Starry Sky Stacker. Then I composite my stuff manually.

The fact that I can use my RAW files directly from Canon, Nikon and others removes a lot of steps. It does a great job of stacking. It definitely works better with uncorrected lens from Lightroom (as the help in SSS says).

I use it for normal lenses as well as my telescope. EXIF data is missing for my telescope and it does not seem to see my 14mm Rokinon lens either, but it just a warning. Lightroom sees the lens though. It would be nice to be able to add the lens data (if it matters to the program) when I load the images. If it does not matter, then it does not matter.

Highly recommended for tracked shots.

Happy with program

Have used this on three deep sky images and have been very happy with the result. It greatly reduced the noise and improved the quality of the images, which were based on sets of 12 to 40 images. The automatic image quality rating did not work so well in the 40-image case. Some of the images that were classified as poor were not so bad and some that were classified as good were not so good. You definitely want to check the image quality manually and not just rely on the program. Its easy to manually examine the images and eliminate ones that are not good. I found that the mean worked slightly better than the median in one case.