Reply To: The Milky Way in Mexico

[Ezra Morley]

For those who are interested, here is the batch script that I used for processing a folder full of RAW astro-photos.

"C:\Program Files\RawTherapee-4.2.539\rawtherapee.exe" -b16 -t -w  -c EJM*.PEF
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Hugin\bin\align_image_stack.exe" -m -v -a aligned_ EJM_*.tif
"C:\Program Files\gmic-1.7.5_pre-win64\gmic.exe" -average_files aligned*.tif -o averaged.tif,ushort
DEL EJM_*.tif
DEL aligned_*.tif
"C:\Program Files\exiftool-10.25\exiftool.exe" -TagsFromFile EJM_0076*.PEF averaged.tif
"C:\Program Files\RawTherapee-4.2.539\rawtherapee.exe" -w averaged.tif
PAUSE

If you have RawTherapee installed, just make sure that you have the correct path in the first line of code (replace the words between the quotes, leave the rest of the code intact). You’ll need Hugin for the align_image_stack executable, and you’ll have to make sure that you have the correct path for it as well. GMIC you can get here. Install it, and point the script to your executable. exiftool is for copying the EXIF data from one of the original files to the stacked file. You can download EXIFTool here.

You’ll also need to change the filename prefixes in the code to your camera’s default. (Usually something like IMG_ or DSC_)

So the changed code (for the IMG_ prefix) would be:

"C:\Program Files\RawTherapee-4.2.539\rawtherapee.exe" -b16 -t -w  -c IMG*.PEF
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Hugin\bin\align_image_stack.exe" -m -v -a aligned_ IMG_*.tif
"C:\Program Files\gmic-1.7.5_pre-win64\gmic.exe" -average_files aligned*.tif -o averaged.tif,ushort
DEL IMG_*.tif
DEL aligned_*.tif
"C:\Program Files\exiftool-10.25\exiftool.exe" -TagsFromFile IMG_0076*.PEF averaged.tif
"C:\Program Files\RawTherapee-4.2.539\rawtherapee.exe" -w averaged.tif
PAUSE

Make sure you update the filename for exiftool too. My camera shoots .PEF RAW files, yours will likely be either .CRW/CR2 or .NEF You’ll need to change every instance of .PEF to .CRw/CR2 or .NEF. Otherwise you’ll get an error.

If you have any trouble with it, just ask, and I’ll try to help you out. It took me a long time to learn how to do all this, but the plus side is, now I have some experience! So don’t be afraid to ask!