Is there anyway to edit images acquired with a telescope?

I’ve been using PhotoLab 2 and 3 (trying to move from Lightroom) and for the most part it’s a great option, but there’s one thing that makes it impossible for me to make the switch permanently.

As best I can tell there’s no way to edit a photo that does not have a DXO Lens profile. I shoot a lot of astroimages and typically use my DSLR (Pentax K-1) and a telescope rather than a camera lens.

My images could greatly benefit from the tools in PL 3, but I’m unable to use them.

Is there any way of forcing PL-2 to open my astroimages? Or some way of spoofing a lens profile?

Hello @Craigbob and welcome to the Forum!

@Marie, could you, please, reply?

Thank you,
Regards,
Svetlana G.

I can’t be the only person to have requested this can I?

Can you explain that a little bit more?

Without an optical module lens sharpness is not available and some corrections (e. g. vignetting, distortion) can’t be done automatically. But that shouldn’t mean that you can’t edit an image at all.

Hello @Craigbob,

you say My images could greatly benefit from the tools in PL 3, but I’m unable to use them.
I’m surprised you can’t open your images in PhotoLab, the only restriction I see with your system is we won’t propose a lens correction module.
Can you upload one image you can’t use for analysis ?

Best regards,
Marie

Sure, Here’s a screen shot of what I’m talking about. this is a tiff file produced by a program called Deep Sky Stacker. I’m able to open it in Photoshop and Capture 1 but not DxO PL3.

Here’s a screen shot of the error:

I’ll have to post a link to the actual file as it’s too large to upload here.

Here’s the link to the actual file.

Autosave.tif

As far as I know, PL works with raw files only regarding Prime denoise and lens sharpness.

That was my understanding as well, so maybe it’s something with the TIF file created by Deep Sky Stacker.

What about non DSLR cameras such as an cooled Astronomy camera like an SBIG STF-8300C? I don’t have any of those images handy at work but I can test them when I get home. I know I get an error when I try and load images from my Pentax Q7. PL3 tells me it can’t load those RAW images which are .DNG files since it’s an unsupported camera, so I’m wondering how a cooled astro camera will be handled.

@Craigbob,

thanks for the file, I’ll pass it to the development team for analysis.
I thought it was a RAW file, if you have a RAW file from a supported camera the only thing is you won’t have the lens correction module.
For dng files from not calibrated cameras we are working on a solution to be able to handle them.

Regards,
Marie

Thanks for the answer Marie. I’m not sure how familiar you are with astroimaging, but the basic process is to do calibration on each image before registering and stacking them (calibration involves removing noise by subtracting dark frames, similar to the in camera long exposure noise reduction in many DSLRS, removing vignetting and dust spots by subtracting out flat frames).

Once stacked the resulting output is done in either a FITS format (used for scientific images that I don’t expect DXO or any normal image editing sw to support) or TIF (32 bit or less commonly 16 bit format). I suspect that the file I sent you is a 32 bit TIF.

I’m glad to hear that you’re team is working on a solution to handle raw files from non supported cameras. I’d love to be able to edit my Pentax Q7 images in DXO PL3.

I don’t know if this helps but the file opens in Affinity Photo.
If then exported as a .tiff, it opens in DXO3.

I think I understand what you mean,Gerrit, but this statement is a bit ambiguous, and could be misunderstood by a new user …

  • PL works with RGB images (JPGs, TIFFs, etc) and RAW images.

  • PL applies specific automated optical corrections to images according to the [Body+Lens] combination used to create them … assuming a corresponding DxO Optics Module exists for this combo. eg.
    – Lens distortion correction
    – Lens vignetting reduction
    – Lens sharpness correction

  • Some of the discretionary correction tools work only on RAW files; eg.
    – PRIME noise reduction
    – RAW White Balance
    – Optics-Module dependant Lens Sharpness adjustments … use Unsharp Mask instead.

Regards, John M

I think DxO has trouble opening compressed TIF files. It can write TIF files (8b or 16b) and read them back just fine.

I don’t think this is a compressed Tiff, but a 32 bit. Tiff. Photoshop opens it fine, but Lightroom doesn’t.