Email this morning from Pleiades Astrophoto:
Quote:
Hi Chris,
We are pleased to inform you that a new software updates repository is now available to all PixInsight users: Update-development.
Update-development provides new tools and scripts that are being actively developed by PTeam members and other developers/users that collaborate with the PixInsight project. While these products are still in the beta test development stage, we only provide them through our update system when we are sure that they are sufficiently stable and cannot cause problems to existing PixInsight installations.
Update-development allows you to try out new tools before they become part of the official PixInsight distributions. In most cases these tools are derived from active research and development projects that represent the next steps in the evolution of the PixInsight platform. By using and testing these tools, you can become involved in their development and help us and our contributors with your experiences, opinions and bug reports.
To enable the update-development repository in your PixInsight, follow these steps:
1. From the main menu, select Resources > Updates > Manage Repositories.
2. On the Manage Update Repositories dialog, click the Add button.
3. On the Add PixInsight Repository dialog, type the following URL:
http://update-devel.pixinsight.com/
4. Click the OK button.
5. Click the OK button again on the Manage Update Repositories dialog.
6. From the main menu, select Resources > Updates > Check for Updates.
Now you should receive two updates for the new GradientDomain module by Georg Viehoever, which we comment below.
New GradientDomain Module
=========================
German software developer Georg Viehoever has recently started working on an exciting new set of PixInsight tools: the GradientDomain module. This module is now available at the update-development repository.
GradientDomain includes two new tools: GradientsHDRCompression and GradientsMergeMosaic. As its name suggests, the GradientsHDRCompression tool performs the dynamic range compression of high dynamic range images using algorithms to manipulate images in the gradient domain (briefly, gradients represent the ratio and orientation of brightness variations on an image). There are already a number of tools that perform similar and related tasks in PixInsight, notably HDRWaveletTransform and LocalHistogramEqualization, applying different techniques and principles.
GradientsMergeMosaic is an outstanding, easy-to-use tool to generate seamless mosaics --and we *really* mean seamless. You just have to align your mosaic frames with StarAlignment (in register/union - separate mode) with frame adaptation enabled, then use GradientsMergeMosaic to generate a seamless final mosaic. GradientsMergeMosaic works remarkably well to fix any visible differences between mosaic frames due to nonlinear residual gradients and slight calibration errors, which cannot be solved by StarAlignment's linear frame adaptation routines.
For detailed information on the GradientDomain module with numerous examples and descriptions, refer to the following threads on PixInsight Forum, where you can follow the development of this exciting project: (newest threads at top)
http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3295.0
http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3289.0
http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3283.0
http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3211.0
http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3173.0
Thank you for your attention,
The PixInsight Team at Pleiades Astrophoto
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