Nikonian72 wrote:
Does Zerene handle raw files?
I took this from the Zerene FAQ section:
What kinds of image files will Zerene Stacker handle?The input and output formats are JPEG and TIFF, the latter in either 8- or 16-bit RGB. In general the most reliable TIFF format is uncompressed; some compressed formats such as 16-bit ZIP are not readable. A few other formats such as PNG and BMP can be read but not written.
Does Zerene Stacker handle raw files?To process raw files takes two separate steps. First you convert the raw files to some RGB format, typically TIFF, and then you stack the TIFF files.
For highest quality, we recommend converting raw files to 16-bit TIFF using your favorite raw converter and whatever settings make it work the best. After stacking the 16-bit TIFFs, tell Zerene Stacker to save its output also as 16-bit TIFF.
Because 16-bit TIFF files are not compressed and also have deeper pixels than any current raw format, this process retains all of the image quality intrinsic to the raw formats.
Zerene Systems does not provide raw converters. You can download those separately, or use software provided by your camera manufacturer.
If you use Lightroom, then be aware that there's a Lightroom plugin for Zerene Stacker that handles raw conversion automatically. When using Lightroom with the plugin, processing raw files is just a matter of selecting them and doing an Export to Zerene Stacker. See Working with Lightroom for more details about this "Pro-only" feature.
A longer explanation is that no stacking software really works directly with raw files.
The structure of data in a typical raw image file, one value per photosite with color implied by a mosaic Bayer filter pattern, is fundamentally incompatible with the image alignment process that is required for stacking.
Some stacking software deals with this aspect by accepting raw files at the level of the user interface, then converting them to an RGB format in a background process that is easy to overlook and may be difficult to optimize.
Zerene Stacker goes the other route, exposing the conversion process and encouraging users to deal with it as what we think it really is: a key part of the overall workflow that needs to have some attention paid to it in order to get best results.