skypointer2000
SEQUATOR - The new kid on the (Windows) block
I have been promoting noise reduction by stacking for years, but while I was able to recommend "Starry Landscape Stacker" for MAC users, there was no easy to use Software for Windows.
This has changed lately, with the release of SEQUATOR, a very easy to use program for stacking untracked nightscapes (for noise reduction) and the best of all: It is freeware!
sites.google.com/site/sequatorglobal/home
So far, I have been using fitswork, a dedicated software for stacking tracked star images. While I learned to use it for untracked images as well, this process is painfully slow. It would therefore be immensely helpful if SEQUATOR was able to perform as beautifully as fitswork, without all the slow manual interventions needed…
Today, I was able to do my first test of SEQUATOR. To see how it performs, I did a side by side comparison with an image I already processed with fitswork.
First I had to find an untracked image sequence. I have been doing mainly tracked shots lately, but I found my Bisti Eggs image which I shot from a fixed tripod:
To get a meaningful comparison, I decided run SEQUATOR with the same preprocessed TIFFs I have used for stacking in fitswork and publish some 100% crops taken from the resulting TIFFs right out of SEQUATOR and fitswork and without further processing. SEQUATOR has several options for stacking, but I found that “Freeze Ground”, “Auto Brightness OFF” and “High Dynamic Range ON” worked best for me.
As you can see, SEQUATOR does an extremely nice job. There are no star trails and no stacking errors and I really like how the foreground and the horizon are razor sharp. Very impressive indeed!
On closer scrutiny, the SEQUATOR result has a tad more saturated colors than my fitswork resut, but selecting “High Dynamic Range ON” avoided burning the stars. The increased saturation leads to slightly increased color fringes around the brighter stars, but this would have happened with the fitswork image as well during post processing and there are techniques to reduce this effect during processing.
SEQUATOR is really easy to use and it took me less than 5 minutes to produce the result, while my normal workflow in fitswork takes about 3 hours to arrive at the same stage.
Conclusion:
I can highly recommend SEQUATOR! If I ever have to process an untracked image sequence again, I use SEQUATOR instead of my fitswork workflow.
On Windows, it is by far the easiest to use and fastest stacking software for nightscapes and produces very good results. Even beginners can immediately produce excellent results. There are no excuses anymore for noisy single shot nightsapes… ;-)
PS:
1. Of course I still highly recommend using a tracking mount to achieve “deeper” sky exposures, by using lower ISO and higher exposure times. This means that you have to shoot the foreground separately with your tracker off and merge the two exposures during post processing. For this techique SEQUATOR might not be the best software out there, but to stay fair, that is not what it was built for…
2. Here is a very nice quick tutorial for SEQUATOR. The only point where I disagree with Mike, is that for better sharpness and no burned highlights, I recommend to use HDR instead of Auto Brightness.
SEQUATOR - The new kid on the (Windows) block
I have been promoting noise reduction by stacking for years, but while I was able to recommend "Starry Landscape Stacker" for MAC users, there was no easy to use Software for Windows.
This has changed lately, with the release of SEQUATOR, a very easy to use program for stacking untracked nightscapes (for noise reduction) and the best of all: It is freeware!
sites.google.com/site/sequatorglobal/home
So far, I have been using fitswork, a dedicated software for stacking tracked star images. While I learned to use it for untracked images as well, this process is painfully slow. It would therefore be immensely helpful if SEQUATOR was able to perform as beautifully as fitswork, without all the slow manual interventions needed…
Today, I was able to do my first test of SEQUATOR. To see how it performs, I did a side by side comparison with an image I already processed with fitswork.
First I had to find an untracked image sequence. I have been doing mainly tracked shots lately, but I found my Bisti Eggs image which I shot from a fixed tripod:
To get a meaningful comparison, I decided run SEQUATOR with the same preprocessed TIFFs I have used for stacking in fitswork and publish some 100% crops taken from the resulting TIFFs right out of SEQUATOR and fitswork and without further processing. SEQUATOR has several options for stacking, but I found that “Freeze Ground”, “Auto Brightness OFF” and “High Dynamic Range ON” worked best for me.
As you can see, SEQUATOR does an extremely nice job. There are no star trails and no stacking errors and I really like how the foreground and the horizon are razor sharp. Very impressive indeed!
On closer scrutiny, the SEQUATOR result has a tad more saturated colors than my fitswork resut, but selecting “High Dynamic Range ON” avoided burning the stars. The increased saturation leads to slightly increased color fringes around the brighter stars, but this would have happened with the fitswork image as well during post processing and there are techniques to reduce this effect during processing.
SEQUATOR is really easy to use and it took me less than 5 minutes to produce the result, while my normal workflow in fitswork takes about 3 hours to arrive at the same stage.
Conclusion:
I can highly recommend SEQUATOR! If I ever have to process an untracked image sequence again, I use SEQUATOR instead of my fitswork workflow.
On Windows, it is by far the easiest to use and fastest stacking software for nightscapes and produces very good results. Even beginners can immediately produce excellent results. There are no excuses anymore for noisy single shot nightsapes… ;-)
PS:
1. Of course I still highly recommend using a tracking mount to achieve “deeper” sky exposures, by using lower ISO and higher exposure times. This means that you have to shoot the foreground separately with your tracker off and merge the two exposures during post processing. For this techique SEQUATOR might not be the best software out there, but to stay fair, that is not what it was built for…
2. Here is a very nice quick tutorial for SEQUATOR. The only point where I disagree with Mike, is that for better sharpness and no burned highlights, I recommend to use HDR instead of Auto Brightness.