Tutorial: Planetary Imaging and Image Processing

[iceman]

Hi all.

Mike Salway (iceman) has kindly written a how-to tutorial for Planetary Imaging and Image Processing.

You can read the article at the Projects & Articles (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/?projects) section of the site, or by clicking on the link below:

Planetary Imaging and Image Processing (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/index.php?id=63,306,0,0,1,0)

Thanks to Mike for writing the article.

If you'd like to submit a review or article for the site, please contact me via PM or email. Your contributions are most welcome.

[iceman]

The article is now live on the site.

[Harpspitfire]

whew!- NICE tutorial!!

[matt]

Mike. That's awesome.

That is, as the now classic saying goes (thanks to The Castle)... "going straight to the pool room":thumbsup:

[[1ponders]]

Great writeup Mike. I'm off to give it a go on some of my old images to see what's there :P

btw, there is an alternative to closing registax and reopening it when starting a new batch of bmps for aligning. Rather than close off registax, go back into the align tab, click on framelist and select "Empty List". This will clear registax ready for a new batch of bmps.

I've found this process useful for when working towards creating an animation and trying to get each image to look as similar as possible after processing. It works whether RGB images or seperate R, G or B images are use, but is probably more more relevant for RGBs that aren't going into Astra Image. The advantage of this method is any histogram, gamma, brightness or contrasts adjustments made on the first set of images are kept for each subsequent image processing, but only applied at the wavelets page (hue and saturation are also retained if that page is used as well). I've found it saves a considerable amount of time, and eliminates guess work, and having to write down settings. It will also save wavelets, but that isn't as important as they will be readjusted for the "create reference" phase of optimisation anyway, so having saved wavelet settings is important anyway and this mod doesn't do away with having to do that.

Cheers and thanks again.

[iceman]

Yeh I use that sometimes Paul, but for me it's quicker to close and re-open because I don't touch any of those other settings and my wavelet settings are saved anyway :)

[[1ponders]]

First round of comparisons

First using my standard processing with pretty good data and the second using Mikes processing with the same data.


The third is from crappy data, my processing and fourth Mikes.

[iceman]

The second lot look better.. the first I'd give more contrast to by using curves in photoshop.

[[1ponders]]

It's getting that damn colour right that gets my goat up.

[davidpretorius]

well done to our new member Mike Salway (iceman)!

Hey Mike, thanks and welcome!!

This is a great article and will have people all around the world buzzing I believe! Well Done!

[[1ponders]]

How about someone doing a tutorial on calibrating laptop screens :mad2: On my desktop those first two images look good, on the laptop they look garbage, like I've just taken a pot shot with the gain in Registax, grey around the edges and washed out generally. Hmmm, not happy Jan.

[acropolite]

Thanks Mike, I've got no excuse now for not getting out and doing some imaging. :camera:

[g__day]

Excellent!

[netwolf]

Just went through the tutorial, very well documented process. Just one question, is there a free alternative to the Astraimage software which can do the same thing? What wavelet values do you use for Saturn, Moon or Mars? In an earlier tutorial you suggested keeping 3 higher that 4, 5 and 6. In this one your suggesting the reverse is this correct?

Lastly where can one learn a bit more about Registax and what is actually going on. Especially with the Wavelets side of things.

Regards
Fahim

[iceman]

Which part of AstraImage? Recombining into a colour image, or deconvolution?

IRIS can do deconvolution and GIMP/Photoshop or others (probably even IRIS) can combine R,G,B into a colour image.

For all objects I usually use just wavelets 3,4,5,6 in Registax. Other people sometimes use just wavelet 1, or just wavelet 2. For example, when Dennis gets a good night of seeing, he simply adjusts wavelet 1 to 20. That's it. No extra processing.

Seeing is king, and when you get great seeing you can get away with very little processing to bring out detail and get a great image.

I'm not sure about Registax wavelets, that is, the actual science behind what they're doing. But if you do a search on wavelets in google you'll find a lot of mathematical type papers discussing it. Easy sunday night reading :)

[netwolf]

Thanks Mike, appreciate that info. Been playing with IRIS, and its not quiet easy to use, but it is powerful. I am sure David did a guide on it a while back, but I can not get the link to work.

Wavelets, as little of what I understand are supposed to give you a sense of Time in the Frequency spectrum of a signal. Not just what frequencies are there but when they are there. This helps with signals that are finite in length. I never studied this as it was only coming out when I finished up at uni.

Regards

[netwolf]

FYI to everyone, I have found a software for free that will do the steps done in Astraimage by Mike. Its called Stellar Magic, it has similar deconvolution routines and can combine the image. However I have as yet been unable to locate a method to adjust the Red Green and Blue offsets. Perhaps someone who uses this software can enlighten us. There are two things to note in Stellar magic, it does not read TIFF files so you will need to save images from Registax as BMP's or FITS files. There is a paid pro version of the software which is quiet cheap and might handle TIFF files I have not looked into that one.

Mike thanks again for the most excellent tutorial, its making my life a little easier as you have already done the hard yards.

Regards

[Dennis G]

I'm very new using Registax, but have written and illistrated a number of tech books using photoshop. Have found that I can make a better picture of my Registax efforts by-passing the last two sections and finishing them in Photoshop, filter, curves and contrast. The greater the number of frames that will remain steady the better the finished picture. I've still a lot to learn!
Dennis G

[netwolf]

Dennis could you advise which two steps you skip in Registax?
Could you please elaborate and perhaps illustrate your steps in Photoshop? Could they be done in GIMP or Film GIMP/CinePaint?

Regards
Fahim

[Quark]

Hi Mike,
Have just downloaded Virtual Dub V1.8.8 and have been revisiting your article regarding it's use.

I have successfully loaded an AVI into it but I cannot see how to convert the AVI to individual BMP files. The option you mention from the File menu of Save As BMP doesn't appear to be within the File Menu of this version.

The Save possibilities are;
Save As AVI
Save old format AVI
Save segmented AVI

What I am doing wrong here?

Regards
Trevor

[iceman]

Hi Trevor

They changed it in the newer versions.
It's File -> Export -> Image Sequence.

Then you can save as bmp's.

Cheers

[Quark]

Thanks very much for that Mike,

I have been looking at ways of getting more from my data and this along with ninox will help me, I think.

Regards
Trevor