#ASTRO PHOTO TOOL SOFTWARE#
The curves tool is very easy to use, and is needed to bring out the contrast you are trying to sharpen.Īnother thing I love about this software is that its curves tool is very easy to use, and allows you to adjust the contrast of your sharpened image as you go. Sharp and smooth is the gold-standard to aim for. But just as when you are using wavelets, resist the urge to oversharpen, and be on the watch for artifacts in noisier images. The default settings already produce an impressive result. The interactive nature of this tool makes it easy to experiment with its very few sliders and quickly get a feel for how best to sharpen your images. So the same graphics technology that's used for epic orc battles in computer games can also speedily sharpen your blurry lunar and solar images. One of the highlights of this software is that it employs your computer graphics processing card (GPU) to speed up the process. I find it to be far easier and more intuitive than using wavelets in fact. While I can't specifically recommend it for planetary processing, it is effective and easy to use on high-resolution images of the Sun and Moon. ImPPG applies Lucy-Richardson deconvolution (that's fancy math for 2D signals) along with some other processing to sharpen and otherwise improve images. ImPPG allows real-time sharpening of just a portion of the image, but can quickly process the entire image using your computers 3D graphics hardware. He has released an open-source software package (as in free, including with source code) called Image Post-Processor ( ImPPG). But I never had the time to delve into the idea myself.Įuropean software developer and amateur astronomer Filip Szczerek seems to have had the same insight. Years ago, when I was on a team writing software for the refractive eye surgery market, I learned about using convolutions and deconvolution to simulate optical defects and corrections in a patient's cornea, and I've always thought these ideas could make a better approach to sharpen a blurry lunar image. To many people I know, they are still a mystery. Mastering the sliders in Registax takes practice you need to experiment to get a feel for how they function. I've found that using wavelets is a black art. Then I switch to RegiStax for wavelet sharpening and use Photoshop for any final touches. (Sharpening must be undertaken with care, as the process has an annoying tendency to turn noise into features that don't actually exist!) A raw stacked image of the Moon (top) needs sharpening as well as intensity curves application to produce the image at the bottom.įor a while now, I've been using AutoStakkert to process the video files I captured with SharpCap. Then, in the final step, the image is sharpened with wavelets. The software aligns and stacks those images together. We've already covered how lucky imaging involves recording videos of the Sun, Moon, or planet, and using software such as RegiStaxor AutoStakkert to find the sharpest frames within that video. Getting a sharp image from this takes some finesse. High-resolution views of the Moon or Sun always have this turbulence (seeing) going on. I've found a great new program for my tool chest when it comes to lunar and solar image processing, and I think you might like to try this powerful, easy-to-use tool for yourself. It does not store any personal data.While I don't spend much time on image processing in this blog, I'm going to make an exception this time around. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". In addition to certain standard Google cookies, reCAPTCHA sets a necessary cookie (_GRECAPTCHA) when executed for the purpose of providing its risk analysis. This cookie is used to enable payment on the website without storing any patment information on a server. This cookie is set by Stripe payment gateway. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.