Aligning RAW files: any possibilities?

nielsgeode · Post by **nielsgeode** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 6:50 am

Because I'd like to do as much editing in the original RAW file (and generate only the sidecar files with the edits), I'd like to "prealign" my stacked images before exporting them to TIF (or JPG). It saves time and disk space because the sidecar file is much smaller than a TIF.

Sometimes I take multiple exposures at high ISO too later reduce the noise by averaging these multiple exposurs. Before doing this, the individual shots need to be aligned.

Aligning these RAW files also is handy because in case I want to do other postprocessing I do not have to realign my newly exported JPG files again.

Is there a possibility to do this automatically? Obviousy, manually pixel by pixel alignment in raw files is undoable. It would be really nice if Zerene stacker could:

1) Align the raw files directly and write the crop information into separate side care files
and/or
2) Align JPG's and write the alignment crop information for those images into sidecar files that can be synchronized with their corresponding raw images.

Any suggestions are welcome!

Thanx!
Niels

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 9:25 am

1) Align the raw files directly and write the crop information into separate side care files

Sorry, but aligning raw files is not possible. See the discussion at http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... 4987#84987 to understand the difficulties.

2) Align JPG's and write the alignment crop information for those images into sidecar files that can be synchronized with their corresponding raw images.

The "project" files written by Zerene Stacker save this information. So, if you export to JPEG or TIFF and create a ZS project, then at a later time you can repeat the export to the same file names, launch ZS and reload the project, and ZS will use the new versions for subsequent stacking. In this case it is best to turn off screen image caching (at Options > Preferences > Caching & Undo). Otherwise you may see old versions on screen, even though it will be the new versions used for stacking.

--Rik