Astro IIDC vs Registax Image comparison

[Doodles23 (Dave Bleser)]

I've used Astro IIDC for years now for planetary imaging but I thought it was time to do a comparison study. To do this I needed to convert the captured QT movie to an .avi movie. I wasn't able to figure out how to create an uncompressed avi movie from an uncompressed qt movie. So I just used the highest bitrate possible which created a 20 MB divx .avi file from a 350 MB Astro IIDC encoded QT movie. You can see the results side by side in the attached photo.Despite a lot of fiddling with parameters in Registax I could not get anymore detail from Registax. I will admit the ASTRO IIDC image is somewhat oversharpened to enhance detail. This is the same image posted yesterday.

However Registax has a "dering filter" which proved desirable. When properly adjusted it smoothes the hard planetary edge to give a more realistic 3D appearance to Jupiter. I don't know if that is really its intended use but I like the effect. Astro IIDC always gives a flat appearance to Jupiter as if it was a coin.

[Quark (Trevor)]

Interesting comparison Dave,

I have never heard of this Astro IIDC, prior to you mentioning it.
I use Rgistax V5, but not for much of my processing. Birds ninox program does a top job of centering and cropping. With good data I am only using Registax to create a reference frame, with extremely light wavelet application. Following stacking, again I use very light wavelet application.

Most of my sharpening is done with LR Decon in Astra Image Pro 3 with final sharpening in Photo Shop CS4.

I suppose there are many ways to skin a cat but I think there are much better ways to process than to rely solely on Registax, although it is a most excellent program.

Regards
Trevor