StarBright 0.1 Pre-release; detail extractor and brightness enhancer

[irwjager (Ivo)]

I've finally decided to release the 2nd tool from my StarTools toolchain.

So what does it do?

In essence, it trades off resolution for increased dynamic range. This process is also known as 'binning'. Simple binning, however, often results in other areas getting overexposed, while reducing image resolution. StarBright calculates the optimum amount of binning for *each individual pixel*, minimizing the amount of resolution loss.

For a typical, otherwise properly exposed picture, it is totally possible to enhance an image and retain full resolution, without any noticeable side effects. It makes quite the killer combo with StarWipe's detail enhancing setting... It also does wonders for images where barely anything but stars are visible, bringing out faint DSOs.

StarBright started out life as 3 separate tools, which resulted in a single monster app. It took me a while to distill it down to a single simple app, that is simple enough to use without having to set 10 billion parameters... I'm still making tweaks here and there, but would love to hear any feedback on th usefulness of the app so far. Therefore I've put up a pre-release download on my web page. I'll write a proper manual once I'm happy with the functionality.

The image below (courtesy of Marc Aragnou ) was processed with the following (quite aggressive) settings;

StarBright --in=myInputFile.tiff --scale=50 --keepsize --mode=auto2

No further processing was carried out (though it definitely could use some now). You'll notice it hasn't over-exposed M8's core and has brought out quite a bit of detail in the corners. I had to compress the 'after' image way more than the 'before' image to stay under the 200kb JPEG limit, which in itself means that the amount of detail in the image has increased significantly...

I'd love to hear what you think and would really appreciate any feedback you might have through this forum or via my site! Job offers also very welcome...

Thanks,

Ivo

EDIT: Manual now available.

[allan gould]

Ivo
Thanks for the release of StarBright. That along with Star Wipe will be a valuable adjunct to processing tools. Cant wait for the users guide.

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

Ivo. Nice work, and a Linux version too? Converting to 24 or 48 bit .tiff in Linux?

[irwjager (Ivo)]

Originally Posted by rcheshire

Ivo. Nice work, and a Linux version too? Converting to 24 or 48 bit .tiff in Linux?

StarBright/StarWipe are based on StarTools and share a lot of common code. StarTools currently reads 24-bit RGB uncompressed BMPs, 32-bit RGBX uncompressed BMPs, 24-bit RGB uncompressed TIFF, 48-bit RGB uncompressed TIFF, 32-bit RGBA uncompressed TIFF, 64-bit RGBA uncompressed TIFF, 8-bit Grayscale uncompressed TIFF and 16-bit Grayscale uncompressed TIFF.

The output format is 48-bit RGB uncompressed TIFF.

Hope this helps - I'll try and find some time to finish the manual soon!

[irwjager (Ivo)]

A manual is now available on my site as well.