Specifications

SBIG STF-8300 Manual
2. Normalize the Sky Background - Normalizing the Sky Background
means making sure it comes out a neutral gray in the final image, not
having a subtle color tint. Bring the Red image to the foreground and then
position the Crosshair on an area of the image that represents the Sky
Background, free of any stars or faint nebulosity. Right-click the mouse and
select the Set RGB Black Level. This tells CCDOps how to normalize the
sky background.
3. Set the White
Balance - Again, bring
the Red image to the
foreground and then
position the Crosshair
over a star or area of the
image that you feel
represents the White
Balance. If you get it
wrong it's easy to adjust
so don't worry about it.
Once the Crosshair is
positioned, right-click
and select the Set RGB
White Level. This tells
CCDOps two things:
how to set the color
balance and how to set the contrast of the RGB image such that the star you
identified comes out white (neutral color) and just saturates in the RGB
image. Now that the hard work is done you can close the Red, Green and
Blue images and then invoke the RGB Combine command in the Utility
menu. You'll be shown the dialog at right. If the Advanced Setting section is
not visible, click the green triangle to reveal it. To finish the color
processing do the following:
4. Identify the images - Click the Set Name button to the right of the Red
and navigate through your folders on your hard drive to find the Red image.
Double-click the Red Image or select it and hit Open.
If you used CCDOps to acquire the images they will be named XXXX.r,
XXXX.g and XXXX.b and at this point CCDOps will fill in the names of
the Green and Blue images for you. If not then click the Set Name button to
the right of the Green and Blue and identify those images.
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5. Initial RGB image - Click the “Do It” button to see the results of
merging the Red, Green and Blue images into a single RGB image. 6.
Tweak the parameters – [a] Co-alignment - Modify the Horizontal and
Vertical adjustments edit fields to the right of each image to tweak the co-
alignment. The easiest way to do this is to look at the outer fringes of stars
my zooming in on the RGB image. If the stars have a Red tint to the right