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RegiStax 4 User Manual V1.0

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1. Luminance essentially brightness is extracted from the view full image colour data and recombined afterwards I Note also that RegiStax will analyse the files automatically if you enable Autodetect Colour B amp W in the Messages option tab and if it seems that the Colour check box is wrongly set for the type of image it will ask you if you want to change it There are two ways to load image files Either Click the Select button described above and use the standard Windows file Load dialog or open a Windows explorer window and drag amp drop the files onto the main RegiStax window Due to limitations in the windows operating system you can experience limitations in selecting files via the Select button If you are affected by this then use the other method where the normal RegiStax limitation for frames max 10000 exists When you are in the Load dialog you can use the standard Windows behaviour to select more than one file that is highlight them while pressing the SHIFT or CTRL key on your keyboard RegiStax will display a preview of each file you highlight in the dialog box Open file s E _ xl Look in moon EJ size B40 480 fr 701 DIB vids File name Files of type Video avi Cancel Open as read only Once you have loaded more than one image frame you are ready to begin processing at the Align tab If however you have loaded
2. the one above that by 3 the one below the zm DEDE aime m central pixel by 17 and so on These numbers z are then added and divided by the sum of the SES numbers in the matrix 350 in this case and a ae this is the value assigned to this pixel Initial Step For the next wavelet the value of the filter is 2 lt G 54 0 30 24 and a 9x9 matrix is created by using numbers in the above matrix twice This the central Set layers Set Gaussian vertical column would read 3 8 8 50 17 17 22 22 For the wavelet of value 3 each cell is used three times create 15 15 matrix so on Below the edit boxes is some text which indicates what proportion of the filter is contributed by the central pixel 51 in the example above b Gaussian A Gaussian curve is a symmetrical bell shaped curve with a formal mathematical definition controlled by two parameters the central value and a measure of the width For the purpose of a wavelet filter the curve is centred on the pixel under consideration and the width is specified by the entries in the two edit boxes at the bottom of the wavelet filter window This filter therefore allows the user a wide range of accurate filters because a Gaussian filter is not limited to a 5x5 matrix The Initial entry is the width of the first wavelet and the Step is the increment from one wavelet to the next The actual step is the product of the two numbers so that in t
3. Show Area FF Show Red mr Up Up 4 Move Area FF Show Green Lt Lt Ft Reset Define Area Show Blue If your image was captured in colour and especially if the object was low in the sky at the time you will want to use the function RGBAlign behind the third tab The atmosphere causes the three colours that compose a colour image to separate This function puts them back together again The system estimates the required shift in a small area of the picture check Show Area to reveal this area on the image The size is the same as the alignment box used at the alignment stage and it is placed on the first or only alignment point If you prefer to use a different part of the image check Move Area and as you move the mouse over the image a box follows the pointer and is placed by a click If you would prefer a different size or shape of box use Define Area and drag out the box you want This box can be moved with Move Area Once you are satisfied that the box is where you want it to be press Estimate and the system will calculate the best shifts to the red and blue images to line them up with the green image Although this automatic estimation generally works very well it very occasionally goes badly wrong especially with images very poor in one colour such as blue in Mars Always look at the shifts displayed in the four edit boxes the lower one should be roughly the negative of the corresponding upper one such as 2 a
4. Wavelet Final About L The Align Optimize and Stack tabs are all designed for combining multiple image frames into a single image The Wavelet and Final tabs are for processing that single image performing such operations as sharpening and colour balancing In this manual we will use the term Tab Screen and Stage more or less interchangably although generally the tab is the part at the top of the screen which can be clicked the screen is the display that appears as a consequence of clicking and the stage is the conceptual stage of processing that the screen represents Buttons Working upwards again the top line of controls located just underneath the window title bar is a set of buttons in groups labelled Files Project files and an unlabelled group of three Files Project files File Version 4 0 1 0 22 10 2006 15 41 Select Imagelnfo Save Load Save as Memory used 73MB From Clipb Pause The Files group contains the following buttons Select Used to load new image files to begin a new processing session Flat Dark Used to create a dark or flat frame or later to load such frames for use This button opens a menu with four options e Create Darkframe This creates a dark frame from the current set of images It simply stacks all the images without aligning registering Afterwards save it and load your images for processing then use Load Darkframe to use it e Create Flatfield
5. C Compressed Save Registerntegrated AVI A Create registered AVI file a Save Saves an AVI of the aligned frames b Image size You can select just the alignment area or the maximum area common to all frames B Create integrated AVI file a Moving average The new AVI is created from the average of a selectable number of frames N The first frame will be the average of frames 1 to N the next frames 2 to N 1 and so on b Compressed Again a number of frames N can be selected The system then stacks the original frames in groups of N and writes the result to a new AVI file The first frame of the new AVI will be derived by stacking frames 1 to N of the original the second from frames N 1 to 2N and so on RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 29 4 Additional Options Prefilter 4 Drizzling Interlace ims es Stack iv oer a Active 4 1 1 il P a Use 80 p none LRGB Pre defined filters X T X Relative pixelsize rj 96 odd amp even lines odd lines mm rit rl Set I x x Resizing Factor 2 00 7 even lines Sie ates Additional options Prefilter Prefiltering can be use to filter noise from the frames before they are stacked Please refer to the Optimize Section for a full description of how this works a Achoice of 10 prefiltering options and a check box to activate one b Asetof edit
6. RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 written by Peter Lloyd and Dave Nash with help from Cor Berrevoets and Linux information by Ken Hough 2 october 2006 Table of Contents REGISTAX V4 QUICK USER GUIDE by Cor Berrevoets cccccccccssscsssseneeeneeeeeeeseeceeenssseeeeeeeeseeeoeeessseeeeeees 3 INTRODUCING REGISTAX VERSION 4 0 leere eren nennen nnn uana nnmnnn 11 THE REGISTAX WINDOW aia A falto eda bee dev Co fate desea sain aue ba edd ai 11 LOADING IMAGE FILES ITE 13 THE ALIGN STAGE es e n 14 SINGLE POINT ALIGNMENT 2 coit ott us Deed tendu adus ee tw nies detta 16 MULTIPOINT ALIGNMENT 5 tidie cec dices tid LE iE 16 STARTING ALIGNMENT m ae 18 AFTER ALIGNMEN a 20 5 mE 21 OPTIMIZER CONTROLS ene Pe aerate 22 TAHE STAGA STAGE oi aaerv acest C 24 Oe 26 THE 5 M ee 31 REFERENC E X 33 THE FINAL STAGE 40 APPENDIX 1 A DETAILED EXPLANATION OF WAVELE TS 42 APPENDIX 2 REG
7. Pressing the button shows on the image the effect that that wavelet will have by colouring avelet filter C Default Gaussian wavelet scheme 1 C Dyadic Linear Initial Step 7 Layer En Layer Preview d EINE TM 8 8 0 15 4 10 Load Save Scheme Scheme green the areas which will increase and red the areas which will decrease when the wavelet is enhanced Double clicking anywhere on the slider will reset the value to 1 0 Finally a check box can be used to disable the visible effect of the wavelet completely A button enables a wavelet scheme to be recorded in a file and another loads a scheme back again This is useful if you want to set the wavelets the same for several images Tabs RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Wavelet Options Resize Image Wavelet Fitter Seno Tonemap Processing Image Markings Functions Histogram Automatic i Views Full Image Show Processing Area RGB Wavelet Setting ey Stacksize Show Zoomed Show Alignment Points Balance GB Align Additional options Wavelet options 2102010100285 A Processing Two check boxes a Automatic Causes Process to be implemented automatically whenever it is needed This will slow the system down and you may find moving the sliders somewhat more tricky with this set b Hold Wavelet Setting Normally when you start processing a new file all the w
8. Show Zoomed Show Alignment Points Balance Tonemap ctacksize Image 288 4 Wavelet options f tis Maelo Melle Pase ie LEGE UE Wavelet filter Defaut Gaussian 4 Wavelet scheme Dyadic 2 n Linear Initial 1 Step 0 Increment Preview cuni wavelets done The power of RegiStax sits in the usage of Wavelets This is a special filtering technique that is rather good in enhancing details in images The waveletstage is where it all happens 14 On the left you see 6 sliders that are numbered from 1 to 6 Now start by moving slider 1 to the right and watch the changes in the image when you release the slider Move slider 1 back to its origin or double click it and now move slider 2 Notice that this slider also changes the picture but in a slightly different fashion Just try all the sliders to get a feel for the effect they have As you will see the sliders with a larger number enhance details that are in general larger than the sliders with a lower number There is no best position for these sliders since the nature of the method wavelets is so that the best position is depending fully on the quality and the amount of images used You can also use several of the other image processing feature like the histogram gamma etc to enhance your image When you are happy with the result you can save it in several formats This is the end of o
9. lt lt eo Reset HSL Saturation 0 Lightness 0 Advanced HSL Ti Use Cropping Save Image Resize Clipboard eee BD gt processing tinishea pixel x 2 y 79 stacksize 2 0 R 44 0 G 42 5 B 50 0 7 Finally page which provides the ability to do some simple transformations on the final image flipping rotation clipping and sizing and a powerful ability to modify the colours A Flipping Two check boxes enable the image to be reversed left to right Flip X or top to bottom Flip Y Checking both achieves a 180 rotation about the middle of the image These functions are useful for pictures taken through telescopes with an odd number of mirrors B Rotation The centre of rotation can be selected by pressing the button Set Centre of Rotation and clicking on the image at the required point Three controls are provided to control the rotation two edit boxes and a rotary control The first edit box on the left enables the degree of rotation to be set to any integer value The second box gives a selection of values in 15 intervals Finally a rotary control enables the degree of rotation to be set in intervals of 10 Unfortunately when you use the Save Image button to save the image if you choose bmp or jpg formats you will only save the image as you see it on the screen and if you use any of the other formats you will get the full picture but it will not be rotated C Cro
10. For this job it is important to have a good so called reference frame in other words the frame with which all others will be compared in order to determine their alignment and quality By default the reference frame will be the one you used to set the alignment points on the previous stage but RegiStax has a mechanism for creating a better reference frame Click the Create button and the program will run through the Ereute a Merenre omie whole optimize stack process automatically for a small subset of frames by default a maximum of 50 frames or half of the frames PE available for optimizing These will by definition be the best 50 frames because the frame set has been ordered by quality When the frames have been stacked automatically the Wavelet screen will be shown The idea now is for you to enhance the quality of the image such that it will be improved and will be suitable for use as a reference frame when processing the rest of the frames See the Wavelet stage for more details of how to enhance the image TIP Don t over enhance the image in the wavelets only a slight sharpening will be helpful When you ve improved the reference image you should click Continue on the wavelet screen and the Optimize stage will be active again RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 21 Optimizer controls Besides the reference frame controls there are some other controls to look at on this screen which control the operation of t
11. Gamma overrules graph 1 20 Gamma overrules graph 1 00 e Tonemap Real images both terrestrial and astronomical have a dynamic E range the difference between the lightest and the darkest parts which is greater than can be displayed on a monitor or printed on paper Tone Mapping is an attempt to preserve detail whilst compressing the dynamic range and to allow for the fact that the human visual system sees colours differently depending on their surroundings There are many algorithms to do this none of which is perfect but all of which can do a good job in limited circumstances RegiStax V4 provides a first attempt to incorporate one of these packaged in a very simple to use graphical format As far as the user is concerned manipulating this graph is very much the same as manipulating the gamma curve right click to add a control point ctrl leff click to remove one In this case one central point and two v Activate extreme ones are already defined and can be dragged about with the mouse Generally dragging the central point downwards to the right will make the image darker and dragging it up and to the left will make it lighter The transformation routines acting behind the scenes use histogram equalising routines and so there is no point where the image in unaffected The checkbox Activate must be checked to implement the algorithms The changes that occur are reflected in the histograms both the general and the co
12. Multi point stacking options ur FF Colour Expandto maximum imagesize Show Stacklist Fast method x LRGB Stretch histogram after stacking Show Stackgraph Use feather of 5 pixels ize i i f AI UELLE POE Normalize intensity over frames Do not stack pixels at the frame edge VV Show alignment sections Image Stack options Save Register Inteqrated AVI Additional options 4 Alignmentpoints x BunguESEBEBHEEHHDEEH Processing frame 36 Stacksize 302 Frames 2 Sigma Clipping Pixel operations during stacking Stack m Colour ml Cut pixels below sigma low Search LRGB Start FF Cut pixels above sigma high Sigma 2 00 E Save Reject highest value per pixel Sigma Clipping a This implements a scheme to eliminate outlying values amongst the pixels by eliminating any point more than so many N standard deviations sigma from the mean for that pixel 2 sigma will include about 95 of values Check boxes allow for elimination of pixels having vales above the mean plus N x sigma below the mean minus N x sigma and the single highest pixel This feature is useful if there are hot pixels in the image and no dark frame has been used In that case use only Cut pixels above sigma high If dark pixels exist use Cut pixels below sigma low Both options are checked by default b Search events This is a new feature to RegiStax 4 and is designed to help find transient flashes such as
13. The logarithmic function will follow that in the histogram display and if the histogram has been stretched that will be reflected here too Three sliders and three edit boxes are provided The sliders move the corresponding colour along the Occasionally a box will get left behind on the edge of the image Ignore it it is not real and will go away RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 32 histogram altering its brightness the edit boxes adjust the intensity of the colour The Autobalance button causes the system to balance the colours as best it can and the Reset button resets the sliders and the edit boxes to their starting positions Wavelet Filter opens a window containing the controls which control the wavelets For a detailed description of this feature see the Reference section Gamma is a function with has an effect a little like stretching the histogram but does not cause saturation at either end A gamma of one is neutral a higher value increases the contrast in the darker areas of the picture and decreases it in the brighter parts A gamma less than one does the opposite Generally gamma between 0 7 and 1 3 are sufficient for most purposes Sigmoid and other shapes of curve can be designed by adding control points and dragging the curve as desired Tone Map is a new feature of Version 4 of RegiStax It is a complex function controlled by a simple graphical format that is described in more detail in the Reference section Resi
14. XX stands for the current language After translating all the texts in this textfile it should be saved as lang XX txt where XX stand for a shortcut of the language the translation is in RegiStax will detect such files at startup When your language of choice is translated properly just checkmark the autolanguage setting the next time you start RegiStax it will be in your preferred language Finally on the Additional Options tab is a Bias Subtract option This is for those astronomical images that have a constant background value above zero Check the box and you can enter a value that will be subtracted uniformly across all image frames to remove the background offset After Alignment Once alignment has finished the worst quality frames will be filtered out from the list and the best taken through to the next FP Colour Align stage Optimize You should move to this stage by clicking LRGB the Limit button notice it now has a green line indicating FETTE that you should press it to continue The number of frames Limit ud iE taken through to the Optimize stage depends on the position view full image of the frame slider Initially the slider is set at a point determined by the Lowest quality value If that value is say 40 then it means that frames with a quality estimate that is less than 40 of the best frame of the set are considered to be to low quality and are not taken through to the Optimize stage Since th
15. a different search algorithm This can make your image processing significantly faster but it is possible that quality will suffer since not all possible alignment shift positions are tested Reset Alignpoints Used in rare circumstances to reset the Optimizer s processing during multiple alignment if one or more of the alignmentpoints shows excessive shifts due to a misalignment during processing This option will start optimization for every alignmentpoint using the recorded shifts for alignmentpoint number 1 Show Graphs RegiStax can show graphs that display the quality and alignment of the frames being processed The first graph is Difference and has a red line indicating the relative quality of all frames frames being along the horizontal axis of the graph and a green line showing the difference between frames The Movements graph is actually a window showing the offset between all frames in the set in other words it tells you how much drift you have in your images The window shows a red dot for the position of the alignment point on each frame shown relative to the centre of the graph representing the position of the alignment point in the reference frame The next tab is Resample Drizzle Method Resampling Drizzling Resampling and Drizzling are alternative approaches to enlarging the image during processing Use the Style selector to choose whether to resample drizzle or do neither Both types of enlargement
16. boxes which allow control of the filter matrix and buttons to set the filter or reset it to its default values the flat filter Drizzling When an image is enlarged there are more pixels in the enlarged image than there are in the original and some way has to be found to fill in the extra pixels Resampling used at the align stage is one way and uses an algorithm to interpolate the missing pixels Drizzling is very different it does not use interpolation but uses only real data The enlarged image is built up during stacking but the option must also be selected at the optimize phase so that the required data can be accumulated Any single frame provides one set of pixels The next frame provides a second set which in general will not be exactly aligned with the first they could for example be half the width of a pixel to the right and can be used to start filling in the gaps As more and more frames are stacked more and more of the gaps are filled in In addition these new pixels need not be the same size as the old pixels and the user can decide how big they should be The smaller the size of the new pixels the more space there is to fill in and the more frames are needed The size of the new pixels is chosen with the Relative pixelsize edit box The desired magnification is decided by the Resizing Factor edit box It should also be understood that the number of frames needed by drizzling for any given quality of image is always greater
17. can help gain more accurate alignment between frames Select the Factor to determine how big the enlarged image will be the default is 2x RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 22 Resampling means making the image larger using a straightforward algorithm in which intermediate pixel values are interpolated from the original ones The enlargement method drop down list shows the following algorithms Bell Simple interpolation routine BSpline No sharp transitions but it can cause blurring Lanczos More sharpening but can cause ringing effect Mitchell No sharp transitions often a good compromise between ringing and blurring Drizzling is a different technique in which drift in the image is exploited to provide intermediate pixel values directly This can give an effective increase in image resolution on suitable images Next tab is Prefilter Prefilter Active Pre defined titers 1 1 1 Enabling this feature will make RegiStax apply a filter to each frame before optimization Warning most of the time this will blur the image which is usually not what you want but can be useful for noise reduction or the like To use this feature check the Active box and choose one of the predefined filters or for advanced users define your own by editing the numbers in the 3x3 matrix then pressing Setto enable it The matrix defines the filter as follows Each pixel in the result image depends on the v
18. only one image frame then RegiStax will go directly to the Wavelet frame so that image can be enhanced RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 13 The Align Stage After you have loaded a set of image frames you will find yourself at the Align screen with the Align Tab highlighted at the top of the window The main image window will show the first frame in the list and you will see some new controls at the bottom of the window Preview negative Preview gamma Frame 1 1 701 Goto Frame 1 These e Frame slider slide the handle along to see the frames in the set The current frame number will be shown in the status bar at the bottom of the window and the image will change to show each frame as itis selected e Preview negative check box For some image types it can be advantageous to see the alignment preview as a negative image Check this box to enable such display e Preview gamma Some images can be seen more easily by adjusting their gamma Check this box to do so and adjust the gamma in the numeric control that appears by the side The adjusted images will be used during alignment as it enables features to stand out more clearly However the processed image will be composed of the original
19. screen to be shown Some stages cannot be used and therefore you are prevented from clicking the tab until others have been completed for example you can t go to the wavelet processing screen to sharpen an image until you have either loaded an image or created one using the align and stack screens For this reason processing in RegiStax is generally a more or less sequential affair workflow progressing from one stage to the next in order Tabs that you can click on are shown in green while the current tab is shown in blue green Tabs that are unavailable because the image being processed hasn t reached that stage yet are shown red You can resize the RegiStax window in a few different ways and RegiStax will remember your preferred size position of the window at the next startup You can use the maximize button to fill the screen fully or increase reduce the size of the window using the drag icon at the bottom right of the window Most of the important settings a user can make in RegiStax are saved for next time Note also that RegiStax takes the full size of a 1024x768 pixel screen When RegiStax starts for the first time the bottom status bar will be hidden underneath your Windows task bar To see the status bar click the maximize restore button on the RegiStax Window title bar When you start RegiStax you will see the program window shown above Let s describe the main features The main body is the image space Initially it contains the
20. should be enabled Predict Track Enabling this options makes RegiStax predict the path taken by a drifting image feature Use this option if the drift is predictable otherwise if the drift is more random leave it turned off Misalign Warning Sometimes RegiStax will lose track of the alignment feature it is tracking If this option is enabled you will see a warning in that case If the option is not enabled RegiStax will continue without warning you of the situation Having misaligned frames is likely to lead to a poor result image so it can be useful to have the warning However see the next option below This option must be checked if you want to be prompted to re select the alignment point when alignment begins for each AVI Ignore misaligned frames If this option is enabled then RegiStax will automatically ignore those frames for which it loses track of the alignment point If you don t choose this option then you will be prompted to click on the alignment feature again if the situation does occur RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 18 15 Registax processing AVI moon1 avi 8 x Files Project files File Version 4 0 1 0 22 10 2006 21 03 Select Flat Dark Imagelnfo Save Load Save as Memory used 7 3MB Pause Cancel Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Final About Darkframe Flatfield Tracking settings Save images Interlacing options Show Windows FJ Colour Darkframe FJ Track object default Subdir
21. to reset the contrast to 100 and the brightness to zero the default settings There is also a check box Hold Settings Normally when you start working on a new image these controls are reset to their default settings Checking this box holds the settings until RegiStax is reloaded Checking this box does not prevent you from altering the settings they will stay where you leave them 3 RGB Align RGB Align Area Colour Channel X position Y position Manual PIGONSE Do All Realign with Estimate Ti Show Area i FF Show Red Red Up Up Processed MEET Move Area FF Show Green Rt lt Rt sis Define Area FF Show Blue A Save Reset Blue 0 0 Red channel Dn Blue Channel RGB Align Atmospheric refraction can cause the three colours of which the image is composed to be out of registration with each other This function enables you to re align them Everything is done relative to the green channel so only the red and the blue channels can be adjusted The panel contains a number of buttons check boxes and edit boxes RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 38 A Check boxes a Show Area Alignment of colours takes place in a small area within the image This control reveals this area as two coloured boxes The system initially searches the larger area yellow box and refines its estimates in the inner area green box to find the best soluti
22. works through the list of alignmentpoints in a descending direction ending with alignmentpoint 1 This window shows in red the estimated quality for alignmentpoint 1 for each frame ordered by quality in green the difference between this frame and the frame we choose as a reference and in blue the correlation between the reference and the frame The slider is positioned at the location of the vertical greenbar we see and the image to the left is corresponding to this Make sure that the image is good enough according to you to be used for further processing If its not move the slider on the bottom below the image area further to the left to increase image quality or to the right if you think there are images that are probably still good enough to use Notice that in this graph there is a sudden drop in imagequality and difference This is due to the fact that the file have processed here has dropped frames These frames have been dropped during the recording of the avi and are therefore not useable for us RegiStax shows this in the graphs as frames with quality zero and NO difference The greenbar should NOT be positioned on the section with the dropped frames Initial alignment running point 1 Frame 75 Quality 2108 91950 Quality Difference Correlation 9 After we have made our choice for the worst image we still want to use press the LIMIT button which will make on the frames that are to the left of the gr
23. 0061005 002622 wwsL1 D wwD 10 10 10 10 10 CBinn 0 RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 12 The From Clipboard button loads an image from the Windows clipboard instead of file s Finally the Pause and Cancel buttons can be used to interrupt the processing session of which more later In use there are several pop up tool windows that you might see in RegiStax such as the frame list Such windows can be moved around by dragging them select one by clicking its title bar You can shrink the tool window by pressing the up arrow button on the left side of its title bar This button also serves to unroll the full window after shrinking it Several tool windows can be shown at the same time when you select a tool window by clicking the title bar it will be shown in front of all others Loading Image Files An image session will always begin by loading one or more image Lv files You can load one of more of the following single frame image Preview gamma A file types BMP TIFF FIT JPG or PNG You can also load one or more AVI or SER files which will load all frames from the files Before loading your file or files notice the Colour and LRGB check boxes You should check Colour if your files Align Colour contain colour images and leave it unchecked for black and LRGB white processing Additionally you can select L RGB to have Wl RegiStax process colour files a slightly different way the limit
24. ISTAX RUNNING UNDER 44 RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 2 RegiStax V4 Quick User Guide by Cor Berrevoets A fast processing run using Multiple points The following section is a simple tour for users to get used to the new multi alignment options in RegiStax It does not require much knowledge from previous version Far more information can be read in the sections that follow this brief introduction Initial Page 1 After startup you are presented with the intial screen of Registax RegiStax V 4 0 fem LUA Files Develop Project files File Version 4 0 1 0 24 10 2006 06 17 Select Flat Dark v imageinfo Save Load Saveas Memory used 46MB From Clipb Pause Cancel Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Final About Method Alignmentboxsize Options Quality estimator Processing area Colour Userdefined Alignment Box Method Align 8 Default singe 32 C 256 Manual Aligment Gradient Size 512 Pixels Lace Muttipoint 64 512 caine Cram Lit i Lowest 70 TT Automatic processing None 08 west quality Hold setting View fut image Alignment options MEIN Miles Musee rte gt TIT gt Me RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 3 2 Press the Select button on the top left A dialog will pop up choose the default filetype avi and select the directory wher
25. RegiStax logo and copyright message In use you will see images being processed here RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 11 Above that is the controls area below This part of the window holds the controls for the current RegiStax stage You will see that the controls are loosely divided into groups the first group on the left is fixed in place while the other controls shown depend on which option tab you have chosen As you can see the tabs shown here are Alignment options Quality Filter General options Additional Options and Messages Click each one now to see the different controls available The currently selected tab is shown in Green the others grey Method Alignmentboxsize Options Quality estimator Processing area Colour FON cc Userdefined Alignment Box Method Cot sta ER z 2 fme Automatic processing C 128 Shaw Fremo Liat Lowest quality 80 Hold setting Limit ry cts Show Zoomed Image Alignment options Above the controls area are tabs these reflect the different stages of processing and the different facilities provided by RegiStax They are displayed in the order in which you will use them although you may jump stages at times The stages are Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Final and About Alon Optimize Stack
26. This creates a flat frame based on the set of images Again only a simple stacking routine will be used e Load Darkframe Select a dark frame for use with the current image set e Load Flatfield Select a flat field for use Imagelnfo Click to display information about the current image Using this window you can control the file name during saving Several processing settings are saved in the filename 3 x The user sets the object name the program suggests a datetime based upon the input files Several Objectname noom parameters can be saved Waveletscheme WS Waveletvalues WV Contrast amp Brightness CB Date Time 20061 005_002522 Stacksize ST Gamma GA When the USEIMAGEINFO checkbox is set the information will v Show VWaveletscheme be used during saving When the STAMP BELOW IMAGE is set RegiStax will save M Show Waveletvalues text in a separate text section white below the image 7 Show Stacksize Show Contrast Brightness The Project files buttons are used to save the current Bl Stew Sanne state of the processing session such that it can be resumed later Click Save to store the session ina project file After loading the original image file s with the Select button click Load to restore the session Save As is a special form of Save which saves the project session like Save but renames the original image AVI to match the name of the project file r Stamp below image maoni 2
27. alue of nine pixels in the input image the pixel which in the input image is in the same position as the output pixel under consideration and the eight surrounding that input pixel The value of each is multiplied by the weight which can be negative in the corresponding box in the matrix and the result is normalised to the dynamic range of the file being processed For example The Flat predefined filter assigns an equal weight to each pixel under consideration resulting in a simple blur The laplaceedge filter assigns a high weight 8 to the central pixel and negative weights 1 to those Surrounding it This results in a type of edge detection EIE 1 8 1 Se A filter that represents unity that is the result is the same as the input would be the following 000 010 000 Where only the central pixel contributes to the same pixel on the output Note however that due to the normalisation of values even this filter has the effect of stretching the histogram ie brightening the light sections and darkening dim ones evenly across the image To begin the optimization click the Optimize button or the Optimize amp Stack button Use of the latter will cause RegiStax to move directly to the Stack screen after Optimization has finished and will begin stacking the frames to create a composite If you are using multiple alignment points each point will each be optimized in turn Opti
28. ame to use as a reference for the alignment 6 Our next step is to set the alignment boxes first set the alignmentboxsize Alignment options tab Ive choosen to use 64x64 size boxes on this rather small image Then start adding the alignmentpositions you can do this by left clicking at positions that look interesting and have rather high contrast In lunar images these object are mostly craters mountain chains RegiStax will show in the Multi Alignment Window the location of each point and the size of the alignmentbox they are allowed to be different You can add up to 99 alignmentpoints Deleting a point is easy you can either use the delete button on the list of alignmentpoints or right click in an alignmentbox on the screen Multi Alignment window RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 5 7 Using all the default settings e g Quality method Gradient we now are ready to process the image Processing starts with Alignment This will roughly but often accurately trace the position of each alignmentpoint in every frame RegiStax will go through all the frames for every alignmentpoint and we will see a small window that after processing the 1 alignment point will tell us the estimated time that RegiStax stil needs to process the other points Aligning paint 4 x Time left 00 00 30 8 After processing we get a screen like this A window marked initial alignment running point 1 is presented RegiStax
29. and more controls on four tabs Some of these functions do not work when using LRGB processing Buttons Process Under certain circumstances the wavelet functions have to be recalculated This button does that Do All To save time functions initially are only applied to a Processing Area which is often less than the whole image Its size is set on the Alignment page Pressing this button forces the functions to be applied to the whole image It is important to use this button prior to saving the image Realign with Processed This returns you to the optimize page with the current image as the reference image Save Image This saves the current image A number of different formats are available and the program will remember the last format that you used Do All should always be used prior to Save RegiStax may warn you if you haven t but it may not Reset This resets all wavelets to 1 0 and step to 0 The graphs may appear to do the opposite to what might be expected This is caused by the scaling routine that plots the curves the real effect can be seen on the image RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 33 Wavelet Controls Filter Wavelets depend on a series of filters for details see Appendix 1 and the program provides two ways of calculating these filters Default is the original version that will be familiar to users of the earliest versions of RegiStax It makes use of a user defined matrix available from the Wavelet Filt
30. avelet settings are returned to 1 0 Checking this box prevents that so that the last used setting is retained It does not prevent you from altering them manually but the system will always hold the last values you used B Image Two check boxes a View full image Large pictures are shrunk to fit the window and small images are enlarged Removing this check mark shows the image at its natural size b Show zoomed This opens an extra window showing an enlarged image of part of the main picture It is controlled by pressing CTRL and moving the mouse over the picture until the right part of the picture is shown in the zoom window and then releasing CTRL This enables you to see details of processing even if you have a very large image not all of which is on the screen because you have View full image selected Page 34 C Markings Two check boxes a Show Processing Area Not all the image may be processed when changes on this page are made if the processing area set on the Alignment page is smaller than the image This control indicates the corners of the processing area Removing the checkmark does not always remove the marks completely but Do All removes the remnants b Show Alignment Points This not only reveals the points themselves but also the alignment boxes Each is numbered and also shows the number of frames stacked for that point D Functions Six buttons which toggle extra windows They work the same way as check boxes
31. do press the button and the window appears press it again and the window vanishes a Histogram Histogram x Stretch lo 0 A Reset Smoothing value This opens the histogram display The histogram is a plot of the number of pixels with a given value plotted against that value on a scale of 0 255 A checkbox enables the plot to be displayed on a logarithmic scale which stretches the lower part of the display This can be very useful if there is a big range of values but must be treated with care The range of the histogram can be altered in two ways there are sliders that can be moved inwards or numbers may be inserted into two edit boxes The two are linked change one and the other changes to match The edit boxes will only display or accept integers The Stretch button stretches the histogram to the limits indicated The reset button resets it back to full width Finally an edit box called Smoothing value controls the smoothing of the displayed curve by averaging the values over the number of positions either side RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 35 b RGB Balance This used to be part of the histogram window in earlier versions of RegiStax It has been separated out in this version so that the windows can be smaller On colour images it shows the histograms for each colour and provides sliders edit boxes for each colour which enable the histograms to be moved and scaled to balance up the colours if
32. e Scheme Page 31 Pressing a Preview button causes those places in the image where enhancing the wavelet will cause the image to brighten to be coloured green and the parts that will darken to be coloured red This gives a good idea what that slider will do to the image So starting with the top slider move it to the right to sharpen the small scale details in the image but be aware that the finest detail may be in the noise The second slider will enhance slightly coarser detail and so on down Increase each one carefully and observe the effect on the image Moving the slider to the left reduces the influence of that wavelet and can even be made negative Some people find this useful Double clicking anywhere on the slider control resets that wavelet to 1 0 Small adjustments can be made with the cursor controls on the keyboard or by clicking on the slider control to one side of the slider itself Two schemes are available Linear which is the one described above and Dyadic in which the wavelets widen in geometric progression each being double the size of the previous one This causes the blurring to increase rapidly so that the higher numbered wavelets cause wide spread effects intended originally for nebulae the results on other subjects can be interesting Blue 0 0 EA Red channel pm Dn Blue Channel ness RGB Align Additional options RGB Align Area Colour Channel X position Y position Manual Estimate
33. e final picture This control enables a zone round the edges of each frame to be omitted during stacking and therefore absent from the final image B Multi point stacking options a Fast method This implements a faster stacking algorithm Generally this is as good as the slower version but in multi point stacking it might sometimes cause the joins to show If you see joins in the final image removing this check mark might make them less visible Use feather of N pixels The image is divided into parts around each alignment point When these are reassembled into the full image the joins may show This control causes the edges to be merged over a number of pixels so that the joins do not show Generally the default of 5 pixels works well but it can be altered if need be This feathering will apply to both sides of the join so that a feather of 5 pixels will create a feathered zone 10 pixels wide RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 27 c Show alignment sections This control reveals the sections into which the picture has been divided during stacking A window opens listing the alignment points and enables points to be removed the divisions are then recalculated Registax processing AVI Moon060716_004433 avi ini x Files Project files File Version 4 0 0 17 20 10 2006 11 35 Select v Imagelnfo Save Load Saveas Memory used 73MB Pause Cancel Align Optimize Stack wavelet Fina About Options
34. e slider position indicates the lowest quality frame to take through to the Optimize screen the screen might be showing a poor frame You may move the slider left and right higher quality frames are on the left lower quality on the right to find the worst quality frame you would consider carrying along for processing More frames will be filtered out later So when this has been done click Limit and you will see the Optimize screen appear RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 20 The Optimize Stage Once you have finished aligning the image frames the next stage is the optimizer which looks at each frame in turn to fine tune the alignment te Registax processing AVI moon1 ayvi E 8 x Files Project files File Version 4 0 1 0 22 10 2006 21 03 Select Flat Dark Imagelnfo Save Load Save as Memory used 73MB From Clipb Pause Cancel Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Final About Optimizer Limits Options Show graphs Create a Reference frame Optimize amp Search area 2 pixels F Difference Frames to stack Stack Optimize unti Bing Create 50 4 imize unti Movements less than 1 improvement Reset alignmentpoints Optimize Optimizer EAE xj ALAIN point 1 Average pixel difference 3 383 max 4 599 Quality Difference HEHEHEBESEBEHEHSSBEBEE Processing limited to 699 frames Stacksize 656 Low quality 70 7095 Z
35. e your files are located When we select a file the previewscreen will show the 1 frame of that file Open file s Zoekenin exAMPLES _ 20030607 223312 avi xx m57 avi x m57 divx avi montes apenninus 20030607 225446 avi mooni1 avi hadley 20030607 224110 avi xx vO8av avi Bestandsnaam montes apenninus 20030607 225446 Bestandstypen Video Annuleren als bestand met het kenmerk Alleen lezen 3 After we have selected the file we are planning to process double click the name the file is loaded into RegiStax If we load a B W image and the RegiStax colour checkbox is ON you will get the following messagebox J B W image Image seems to be process in Do notask this again autodetect calour E vv By checkmarking Do not ask this again autodetect colour B W we will make RegiStax by default choose colour or B W based on the file we enter 4 Now we have loaded the file the next step is to set RegiStax for multi point alignment We do this by setting the Method of the tab alignmentoptions to Multipoint Method fe Default single Multipoint None RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 4 5 Now we are presented with the Multi Alignment Window This has several options but in this fast run we will not change any of them After this search using the slider below the image area a good fr
36. ect frames that are poorly aligned or of poor quality The lower graph or the only one has two sliders one below and one to the left of the graph The vertical slider may be move downwards and a green bar follows it All frames whose differences fall above this line will be eliminated from the stack and therefore will not contribute to the final image An example is shown on the right Similarly the horizontal slider may be moved to the left and an area of cross hatching Quality Difference Multi Alignment Point S Quality Cutoff red line 96 100 Limit to maximum frameno 533 RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 24 follows it All frames in the cross hatched area will be omitted from the stack In the case of MAP processing the upper graph has only the horizontal slider and this can be used to eliminate the worst frames from all the alignment points in one setting Alternatively you can just type the number of frames you want into the edit box Corresponding cross hatched areas appear in all the lower graphs automatically but they can be moved on the lower graphs if you wish There is one lower graph for each of the alignment points selected by means of the edit box below it so frames can be selected for each point separately If you are tempted to remove significantly more frames for one alignment point than for others this may not be a good idea because the section of the final picture derived from this point ma
37. ectory Interlaced Haltwindow LRGB Predict track FFT Graph Automatic processing Misalign warning Registration Graph Limit view full image Align Ignore misaligned frames Alignment area 8 x Power spectrum Correlation 4 Aligning point 8 B Time left 00 15 25 cedi SSS SS ISS TITS SST SS SSS SSIS CESS SSS SSS IST SSS SS SCS SS SSS EST TTT Preview negative Preview gamma Frame 1 1 701 Goto Frame 1 HREREBEEBH Processing frame 364 Alignment processing Z This screenshot shows point 8 during the alignment processing During Alignment you may click the Cancel button to interrupt alignment processing This might be necessary if tracking of the alignment point is lost because of poor quality input images for example It might take a couple of seconds for RegiStax to react to your click as alignment processing is very intensive for the computer Once interrupted it is often best to restart RegiStax as the internal state cannot be guaranteed and you may find problems if you attempt to continue Also you can check the Haltwindow check box That will enable a pop up window with a button that can be used to halt the current alignment if tracking has been lost At the same time as alignment is going on RegiStax is also estimating the quality of each frame and sorting the frame s
38. een bar available for further processing RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 6 10 We are now in the optimize stage of RegiStax During this stage the initial alignment will be tested improved using a routine that searches an area around the current estimates for the best alignmentpositions In V3 we used a system that does a so called full matrix search for the best position that aligns the reference and the current frame in V4 we have added a new function which is by default on Single run optimizer This function searches a larger area but does not do this in a full matrix search fashion and therefore is as fast as the normal search of V3 for a smaller area We keep this setting for our example Since we are doing a simple processing run we press Optimize amp Stack Registax processing AVI montes_apenninus_20030607_225446 avidropped frames Files Develop Project files File Version 4 0 1 0 24 10 2006 06 17 Select FlatDarkw Imagelnfo ____ Load Save Memory used 55 From Ciipb Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Final About Optimizer Limits Options Show graphs Create a Reference frame Optimize amp Search area 2 4 pixels IV Difference Frames to stack Sud Pooled Optimize until Movements Optimize less than 1 improvement PreFilter Reset alignmentpoints Processing limited to 168 frames Stacksize 168 Low quality 60 03 11 After s
39. er button Gaussian uses a Gaussian function to derive the filter The user has control of the basic parameters of this filter available from the Wavelet Filter button but can also control them directly here by means of the edit boxes for each wavelet This filter has big advantages over the default filter it is a finer filter not restricted to a 5x5 pixel area and allows finer control over the layers Scheme Linear The wavelets increase in a linear fashion that is each wavelet has a size which is Step bigger than the previous wavelet Dyadic The wavelets increase in a geometric progression that is the second wavelet is twice the first the third is 4 times the first the fourth 8 times the first and so on 2 to the power of the number of the wavelet 1 This setting is mainly useful for large scale objects such as nebulae but linear and Gaussian probably give better control Dyadic is a left over from previous versions of RegiStax Wavelets Initial Layer This edit box sets the starting point for the sizes of the wavelet filters Step Increment This controls the intervals between wavelets Layer Six sets of a slider a button a check box and for Gaussian an edit box one for each wavelet The enhancement factor for the wavelet can be changed by sliding the slider or clicking on one side or the other of the slider or with the cursor control keys which increase or decrease the value by 0 1 The factor is displayed on the button
40. erence section below for a detailed description of these When you are satisfied that you have selected all the frames you want to contribute to the final picture set up feathering and anything else you want involved then press Stack and the stacking process will start The word Stacking will appear on the image and the progress bar at the bottom of the screen will show you how it is getting on When it has finished the word Stacking will vanish and you can move on to the Wavelet phase Finally you should not use the Save Image button until stacking is complete It enables you to save the stacked image and its action when there isn t one is somewhat uncertain RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 25 Reference This section attempts to document all features of the Stack page It consists of two main buttons and a number of controls grouped onto four tabs Buttons Stack Starts stacking Save Image Saves the stacked image Several file formats are available 8 bit bmp and jpg 16 bit png and tiff and 32 bit fits It should not be used before stacking is complete Check boxes Colour Normally already set but can be changed here It controls whether the images are stacked in colour or monochrome If the earlier processing was done in monochrome and this box is checked to create a colour image then the system crates three layers one for each colour but these will be identical However they can be changed later to create for example an artif
41. erence with Clipboard Pressing this displays the difference between the current image and that on the clipboard Red indicates that the intensity is less green that it is more like when a wavelet Preview button is pressed Do not expect this button to toggle pressing it a second time does a second comparison it does not revert Cu Toggle to the original To revert to the original either to Clipboard Current Image n All or select a different Toggle button C Clipboard Image see below ontrast Brightness Additional options c Toggle Current Image Display the current image Clipboard Image Display the image on the clipboard d View Stack Size This shows the alignment areas in tones of grey to indicate the size of the stack for each area The actual size is displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the screen as the mouse pointer is moved over the area Note that the joins for MAP processing will show up as brighter lines if feathering has been used RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 39 The Final Stage 9 Registax processing AVI Moon060716_004433 avidropped frames ni x Files Project files File Version 4 0 0 18 21 10 2006 08 42 Select FlatiDark Imagelnfo Save Load Save as Memory used 73MB Pause Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Final About Flip x Flip Set Centre of Rotation Rotation degrees I deg x 10 Hue 0
42. et into order of quality There are five different methods by which this can be done and you can choose the method used before clicking the Align button Of the five however the best results are usually achieved with the Gradient method It is also the simplest to use as no additional settings are required You can choose the method used by selecting it from the drop down list in the Quality Estimator section of the Alignment options tab If you choose Classic Human Compress or Gradient you can tune the parameters used by going to the General Options tab and adjusting the values found there However even in these cases there is an Settings Current Filter Gradient FP Automatic Start Classic JA Compression 54 Factor Human 4 5 Gradient JA Pixelradius Alignment options filter eneral options jAaditional options Messages automatic option RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 19 RAW colour images Debayer options Use Debaver If your image frames have come from a webcam with the RAW colour firmware modification you need to convert the image frames to correct RGB images before processing This procedure is known as DeBayering ES RegiStax can DeBayer the frames if you enable the option on the C Ro C GB Additional Options control tab There are four DeBayer methods GR BG RG and GB and the one that is right for your camera will vary Click each BARRE inna to
43. filter 1 Defaut Gaussian rMavelet scheme C Dyadic 2 n Linear Lever 1 IZ Layer Increment Layer Preview 25 10 cee Mc 10 a p 4 ja 5 5 Isum som bon 6 DEBA a JM Load Save Scheme Scheme Tonema P Stacksize BERD RRR RRR RRR BREED oe pixel x 130 y 0 stacksize 8 0 R 27 6 26 8 B 28 0 All the frames have been stacked together and now is the time to enhance the image to bring out the detail that is hiding in there and to control the colouring This is largely a matter of personal preference but some general guidance can be given There are some actions better done before others but there are no hard rules A more formal description of the controls on this page is given below in the Reference section The controls do allow you to overdo processing to such a degree that you may create detail that was not really in the original Wavelets are very powerful but have to be used with care unless of course your object is to produce a dramatic image rather than a representation of reality RegiStax provides at this stage a process called Wavelets For a full description of what these are and how they work see the Appendix 1 Suffice it to say at this point that there are six wavelets provided and that wavelet 1 at the top contains the finest detail in the image and wavelet 6 the coarsest detail with the others in order in between In the Default scheme each wa
44. fore be set to at least 1024 x 768 pixels There is no point in setting wine to emulate a virtual desktop There is no need to add any native MS Windows DLL files to the wine system Have fun K Hough RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 44
45. ged using the edit box at the bottom and increased values LEO cause the curve to move upwards making it Reset Load concave to the X axis This increases the contrast in the darker parts of the picture and Initial EDS ee reduces it in the brighter parts Values below EEREN 1841 5d 1 0 the reverse This very powerful function is made even more so by the ability to drag the levers varcadssian curve into any shape one wants To do this control points are introduced onto the curve by clicking the right hand button on the mouse and then dragging it using the left hand button As many such control points as desired can be inserted and so can control the curve to be any desired shape In this way sigmoid curves for example can be created which emphasise contrast in the middle of the intensity range whilst de emphasising it in the brightest and darkest parts Normally the program calculates a smooth curve through the control points but a check box Linear makes it draw straight lines between the control points The curves can be saved or loaded using the corresponding button RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 36 Gamma x Gamma x right click insert a point ctrl left click delete a point right click insert a point ctrl left click delete a point double click reset double click reset 4 J n Linear Linear Load Save Reset Load Save Reset
46. giStax but now it is optional It results in the histogram of the final image being stretched automatically to fill the range 0 0 to 255 0 with 16 bit precision c Balance intensity over frames Different frames of the AVI may be of different brightness caused perhaps by a thin cloud passing over If multiple alignment points are being used then the different areas may be formed by stacking different frames It could happen that one such stack is noticeably darker than another and this would show in the final image This option equalises the brightness of each frame before stacking to avoid this type of problem d Show Stacklist This opens a window displaying all frames in order of their quality as judged from the first alignment point in multi point alignments The list can be used to deselect individual frames During multi point alignments this feature must be used with great care because some frames may be used by some alignment points and not by others Removing some of these might affect the overall quality of the final image RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 26 f Show Stackgraph This displays a graph of quality red and the difference in alignment between each frame and the reference frame green plotted against the frames in order of quality For single point alignment a single graph appears and the quality red line is a smooth curve For multi point alignment two graphs appear the upper one shows only a global qualit
47. he example above the actual step will be 0 03 These widths can be set independently by means of the edit boxes that appear on the main window above the sliders when Gaussian is selected This ability to set the widths independently is an important power of the Gaussian scheme Above the edit boxes is a string of numbers These tell us that with this setting the central pixel provides 8196 of the final value so there is only 1996 contributed from surrounding pixels The other numbers indicate the radii of the successive filters In this example the first filter is five pixels wide 2 2 plus the central pixel and the last is 9 pixels wide 2 4 1 RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 42 An example of something you can do with Gaussian filters that you cannot do with the default filter is the trapping of noise To do it proceed as follows Remove the check mark from the first wavelet Move the slider of the second wavelet upwards until noise becomes apparent in the image Now increase the size of the first filter slowly by increasing the value in the edit box using the up arrow button until the noise disappears All the noise is now trapped in the first wavelet which is disabled and hence does not contribute to the final image If you increase the second wavelet later you may have to repeat the adjustment of the first RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 43 Appendix 2 RegiStax running under Linux RegiStax has been written and compiled to run under M
48. he optimizer Optimizer Limits Options Show graphs Create a Reference frame Search area 2 EA pixels mi FF Difference m Frames to stack reate Optimize until 96 Movements ex 50 less than 1 EA improvement Reset alignmentpoints Optimizer ted The first tab is labelled Optimizer The optimizer works by doing a fine alignment of each alignment point This tab is used for tuning the operation of this process It has these controls Optimizer Limits Search Area Sets the area around the alignment points that will be examined when searching for a better alignment A higher number of pixels will most likely give the best after fewer runs but will take more time A small number of pixels will result in a faster search but more search runs will be necessary Optimize until After each alignment run RegiStax calculates how much improvement the alignment shows compared to the previous run If the improvement is higher than the number in this box as a percentage then the program will perform another run In other words it keeps optimizing over and over until it can t make a significant improvement This value determines what it considers to be significant Options Single Run Optimizer Notwithstanding the Optimize Until control mentioned above if you check this box both the Search Area and the Optimize Until controls will be ignored and only a single optimizing run will be performed using a larger predefined search area with
49. i i i x 2005 0330 22 13 05 0004 r04 Sigma event recording X Start Load events Sigma Low pixelvalue 4 00 100 Frame83 Events max 63 4 Events max 62 Next frame 5 Events max 61 Frame66 Events max 61 Previous frame Frame67 Events max 64 58 Events max 64 Frame69 Events max 63 Events 63 Frame70 Events max 63 Frame71 Events max 63 2 Events max 54 Frame73 Events max 56 Frame74 Events max 58 Frame75 Events max 56 x Box edges Box an Include 7 49 Y1 254 Exclude lt 120 To Hival1z71 25 Sigma1 480 16 2 500 Ms Y2 254 624 Right Pixval2 126 Hival2 82 464 A Bottom Sigma2 504 X3 501 b Load Box Save Box on the picture This is particularly useful if you have a timer display on every frame for example These settings can be saved to and recovered from a file Having run the function you may change the value of sigma upwards and the list of events is recalculated However this does not happen if you reduce it nor if you change the Low pixelvalue The sigma and Low pixelvalue are remembered by the system 3 Save Registered Integrated AVI Create registered AVI file Create integrated AVI file dox FF Colour T page sue zi Method Average of LRGB i Save Alignment area Save Moving average 5 Frames Sisporseneepogesesegugunos H Maximum area TIER
50. iStax will cycle through all frames in the set attempting to track the alignment point through each frame If you are using multipoint alignment it will perform this alignment for each point in turn If you have loaded more than one AVI file you have set misalign warnings under general options you will be prompted before alignment begins for each subsequent file to point at the alignment point again This is because there is likely to be drift between the end of one AVI and the beginning of the next making it difficult for RegiStax to identify the same point between AVIs During alignment if the alignment box moves off the image due to drift of the image the results may be unpredictable If you have significant drift between image frames make sure alignment points are not too close to the edge of the image throughout the whole sequence If the Alignment box moves partially off screen RegiStax cannot estimate image quality shift properly and marks these images as no quality Tracking options Tracking settings ET j Track object Predict track Misalign warning Ignore misaligned frames General options There are some options that control the behaviour of RegiStax during alignment They are shown in the General Options tab of the control section The options and their effects are listed below Track Object If this is enabled RegiStax will attempt to track the alignment point between frames Normally this
51. icially coloured image If the original was in colour and the check mark is removed from this box then the system will create a monochrome image This function has a second value If a set of three or four monochrome images are loaded whose names endin R G and then selecting Colour and at this stage will cause the program to treat these files as red green blue and luminance images and construct a colour image from them LRGB If this box is checked then a luminance value for each pixel will be calculated for use on the Wavelet page This has the advantage that wavelet processing only uses the luminance layer so that the colours will not be affected so much Control Tabs 1 Stack Options Options Multi point stacking options Expand to maximum imagesize Show Stacklist Fast method m Stretch histogram after stacking Show Stackgraph Use feather of BZ pixels Normalize intensity over frames Do not stack 4 pixels at the frame edge o Stack options 11201 e E A Options Stacklist x a Expand to maximum image size Normally the area of image to KZ Allow multiple selected be stacked is that defined by the reference image If this box is checked the program will include all the pixels in all the frames into 5 the final stack thus creating the largest image possible b Stretch histogram after stacking This was the default action under earlier versions of Re
52. icrosoft Windows but Linux users need not be denied the opportunity to use it RegiStax can be run via wine a recursive name standing for Wine Is not an Emulator wine provides an MS Windows API under Linux so that many MS Windows applications can function correctly while running under the Linux operating system On a recent and correctly installed version of Linux all that is necessary to run RegiStax is to click on the desktop icon that is generated when RegiStax is installed The notes below refer to observations made while installing and running RegiStax under SuSE Linux v10 1 using the KDE v3 5 1 desktop manager with wine version 0 9 11 RegiStax will also run under other desktop managers On relatively slow PCs it might be preferable to use a lightweight desktop manager such as fvwm icewm or windowmaker Not all Linux distros include wine but it can be downloaded from lt http Awww winehg com gt Installation running of RegiStax on a Linux system 1 If this is the first time that wine is to be used make sure that it has been installed for SuSE Linux use YAST then as a normal user ie not as root run the command winecfg This will take a few minutes to generate local directories files and font metrics residing under the hidden directory wine Subsequent use of winecfg will immediately display the winecfg configuration terminal 2 To install RegiStax move into the directory containing the installregistax exe f
53. ile and enter the command wine installregistax exe RegiStax will be installed under wine drive_c Program Files 3 RegiStax v3 will load and will run but some components of the GUI will be displaced making it impossible use this version under wine RegiStax V2 and the upcoming RegiStax V4 are displayed correctly and can be run as intended 4 In order to get fonts to display correctly it is necessary to copy the normal MS Windows ttf font files to the wine drive c windows fonts directory In the absence of these files RegiStax is usable but GUI text items such as labels may not be optimally sized Under MS Windows 98 these ttf files can be found in the directory C windows fonts 5 Wine will automatically map MS Windows drive and directory locations as shown by RegiStax and other MS Windows apps to locations on a Linux system These locations are shown and can be modified under the winecfg configuration terminal That s all Quite simple really Although recent versions of wine can be configured via winecfg there should be no need to change anything from the default settings in order to run RegiStax It is generally recommended that unless a specific version of MS Windows must be emulated then wine should be configured to emulate Windows 98 which is OK in this case RegiStax is designed to run on a 1024 x 768 pixel screen and will not resize to fit larger or smaller screens The Linux desktop screen display must there
54. image around that point but less sharp areas in other parts of the final image This can now be solved by aligning different parts of the image separately each using its own alignment point The parts of the image are combined during stacking resulting in an image with sharp details right across it TIP It is important that RegiStax can identify the alignment point s easily in the first frame so before beginning alignment move the frame slider until you find a clear frame in which the features are clear and well defined You should choose the alignment method by clicking one of the buttons in the Alignment Method control By default Single point alignment is selected Click Multipoint to use multiple alignment points Next you must choose the size of the alignment box to use the FFT size This depends on the size of the feature you are going to align on Move the cursor around the image and notice the box If it covers the alignment feature well then it s a good size to use If it is too small then click a larger size in the Alignmentbox control If the alignment box is too big then processing may be slower although larger alignment boxes can result in a better final image sometimes When using multipoint alignment the boxes shouldn t be so big that they overlap For best performance choose one of the predefined alignment box sizes Alternatively check Userdefined Alignment Box In the latter case draw a box using the mouse with the left b
55. image when setting an alignment point click Show Zoomed Image which will show a pop up box displaying an enlarged version of the area where the cursor is By default RegiStax will stack the same number of frames for each alignment point This will usually give the most uniform appearance to a final image However checking Simple in Multi Alignmentmethod will make RegiStax stack just those frames for each point which meet the quality threshold If you want to see how the image will be divided up according to the alignment points you have defined check the Alignmentzones box This will cause the zones to be displayed in the main image area Finally you can save or load alignment points thereby saving yourself the trouble of entering the points again the next time you load a particular set of image files for example to try a different way of processing or because you want to start again RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 16 a Mutti Slignment Windas ulti Alignmentmethod Simple Multi Giurantity Alignmentzones Estimate best Clear align points align points Minimum distance 54 Pixels between pointz Save Points Load Points Alignmentpoints 10 EISE Example lunar image showing 10 alignment points on prominent features RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 17 Starting Alignment To start the alignment process click the Align button In the case of single point alignment Reg
56. ing behind a very highly filtered image This may be summarised mathematically as Filtered Image Original Image x Filter Filtered Image Filtered Image x Filter n 2 6 Layer Filtered Image Filtered Image The result of this is six images or layers and a heavily filtered image which will when added together recreate the original image The net effect of all this is that the first layer derived from the first wavelet contains the finest detail of the image and the successive layers contain coarser and coarser detail Each layer is then multiplied by the factor set by the wavelet sliders before being added together to provide the final image Thus enhancing the smallest wavelet will emphasise the finest detail in the image the largest wavelet the coarsest detail The effects of each layer can be displayed by pressing the Preview button Filters a Default The filter is created by using the 5x5 matrix shown in Wavelet Filters For the purpose of this explanation only the numbers in the figure have all been made different For a filter of value 1 these numbers are used to multiply the values of 25 pixels surrounding and including the pixel being treated Thus this central pixel is multiplied by the central number 50 in the shaded box and the surrounding ones are aS xs Es multiplied by the corresponding entry i e the pixel above the central one is multiplied by 8 Wavelet filter x
57. lour ones Tonemap x Brighter Dimmer RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 37 f Resize Image This opens a new window which shows a resized image A choice of seven size factors from 10 to 200 is provided along with a choice of four interpolation algorithms Choose gt Resized image X Save Imagesize 320 240 Image 1 Fj Original esize ratio C 1096 2596 Filterz t Bell 5 C Lanczos C Mitchell the one that seems to work best for you RegiStax remembers this for next time The widow provides a button Save to save the image in either bmp or jpg format only and another Original to resize to 100 If the resize ratio is greater than 75 the window expands to accommodate the image until it becomes too large for the screen when scroll bars appear 2 Contrast Brightness Hold Settings Contrast 100 a EEEE i Brightness 0 A Contrast Brightness 1 The panel contains the contrast and brightness adjusters Each has a slider and an edit box either of which can be used to adjust the contrast and brightness of the image The up and down arrows in the edit boxes increment the contrast by 5 or the brightness by 2 increments of 1 can be made by clicking on the control to one or other side of the slider or with the cursor control keys and bigger changes by Sliding the slider itself A Reset button is provided
58. meteor trails in long AVIs The picture below courtesy of Roger Venable illustrates this use Normally the yellow ring is much thinner than this here there are 63 extreme pixels very close together The control opens a new window including a Start button pressing which initiates the analysis and records outlying pixels in a file and displays the number in each frame in a text box This list can then be examined to determine how many such pixels are in each frame The data in the file The standard deviation sigma is a statistical measure of the width of a normal distribution If this means nothing to you ignore it but know that generally 95 of observations fall inside 2 sigma 98 inside 3 sigma So you may lose a small number of normal pixels which look like outliers RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 28 may be reloaded later by means of the Load Events button Selecting a frame in this upper box causes the data concerning this frame to appear in the lower box and the outlying points are circled on the image The search uses the value of sigma in the edit box inside this window and ignores that on the main page The statistic that does this work is rather unhelpful if the mean value is too low so pixels with mean values less than the entry in the Low pixelvalue edit box are ignored You can also include or exclude the edges of the picture adjustable with edit boxes and displayed as a yellow box Sanco oan 59 45 n
59. mizing many points can take some time especially if you haven t checked Single Run Optimizer so wait until it has finished Then you will be ready for the Stack Stage RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 23 The Stack Stage Registax processing A I Moon060716_004433 avi mi x Files Project files File Version 4 0 0 17 20 10 2006 11 35 Select Flat Dark v Imagelnfo Load Saveas Memory used 73MB From Clipb Pause Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Fins About Options Multi point stacking options Guy FF Colour Expand to maximum imagesize Show Stacklist Fast method ie LRGB Stretch histogram after stacking Show Stackgraph ma Use feather of 5 pixels Normalize intensity over frames Do not stack pixels at the frame edge Show alignment sections Stack options Save Register Integrated Additional options Geng NE ee en mf Yeap wep Papen eh Processing frame 305 Stack size n 302 640 480 At this point all the images are aligned and optimized and it is time to combine them into a single image This process is called stacking and in effect we add all the images together This process cancels out a lot of the random noise and brings out some of the more subtle detail The first thing to do is to decide which frames you want to include in the stack By default all of those processed so far will be included but some may no
60. nd 2 A difference of 1 is not uncommon but when things go wrong the numbers can differ by 10 or more showing that something is wrong The adjustment can be done manually by putting numbers in the edit boxes or using the buttons on the right hand side which move the colours one pixel at a time Image Markings Functions Histogram Wavelet Galina Resize Filter Image view Full image Show Processing Area ae TUM Show Zoomed Show Alignment Points Balance Stacksize Processing Automatic Hold Wavelet Setting Wavelet options n dd n WAdditional options Returning to the Wavelet Options tab the most useful controls are some of the buttons on the right hand side These buttons work like check boxes in that press them and a window opens press them again and the widow closes Histogram opens the histogram display window This is a plot of the number of pixels contributing to a given brightness within the image plotted against the brightness on a scale of 0 to 255 The vertical scale can be converted to a logarithmic one which stretches the lower part of the display revealing areas with very few pixels Move the sliders to cut off the outer parts of the histogram and press Stretch and the brightness in this range is stretched to 0 to 255 Any pixel cut off at the lower end with be black and at the upper end will be white RGB Balance opens a window displaying the three histograms for the colours
61. needed This can be useful for example for colour images of the Moon where the colours are very subtle and only show up clearly with later enhancement The sliders move the histogram left or right relative to the others changing the brightness of the colour the edit boxes control a scaling factor to increase or decrease the amount of the colour in the image a bit like contrast which also has an effect on the Red displayed histogram for that colour Auto balance causes the program to try to align the peaks the occasus pis CREE ris EE IER three histograms Generally this works well but can FF Green RGB balance x Auto balance give strange looking results on some pictures so mee use with care Reset resets everything to their Aa aaa aaa ria t ra rr n n nn i default positions Stretching the histogram in the histogram window or selecting log based display there affects these graphs also c Wavelet Filter This enables the form of the LESS wavelet function to be modified both for the E x default form and for the Gaussian form See Appendix 1 for details Changing the Gaussian parameters causes Gaussian to be selected as the active filter Unlike the default filter the Gaussian filters can also be controlled from the wavelet slider section d Gamma The gamma curve is the relationship between the input intensity and the output intensity The value can be chan
62. nment points with a check mark beside each Removing the check mark will remove that point and the divisions will be recalculated Two other controls may be important in MAP processing Firstly Use feather of N pixels where N is an edit box Although unchecked by default this is probably better checked It causes the sections of the picture to be overlapped with soft edges and this reduces the likelihood that the joins will show in the final image The second control that may be important is Normalize intensity over frames under Options The different sections of the picture in general use different frames in their stacks If all the frames are not of the same general brightness for instance maybe some light cloud moved over during the capture of the avi then this difference may show in the final image This control adjusts each frame to an average brightness before stacking to eliminate this problem On the left of the screen are two check boxes Colour and LRGB Although these have been set earlier in the processing they can be altered again here If the Colour check mark is removed a monochrome stack will be done and all colour information will be lost If the check mark is inserted the image will still be monochrome but three identical layers will be produced one for each colour and these can be manipulated later There are a number of other options available which will probably only be used by the more experienced users Refer to the Ref
63. ny shaped curve and so control the hue saturation and lightness of bands of colour The s two control points at the extreme edges are the same point so the function is circular Take care not to drag a control point under a label you may not be able to pick it up again But Reset HSL will recover it right click insert a point F Remaining Controls ctri left click delete a point Save Image saves the image but see the restrictions above concerning resized and rotated images If the Use Cropping checkbox is checked the image will be cropped before saving if and only if the format is bmp or jpg Clipboard sends the image to the clipboard If Use Cropping is checked the image is cropped before saving on the clipboard This clipboard image cannot be viewed via the Additional Option on the wavelet page If the image has been rotated the image sent to the clipboard is exactly as seen on the screen RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 41 Appendix 1 A detailed explanation of wavelets The system uses a series of filters which slightly blur the image The first wavelet is created by multiplying the original image by the filter and then subtracting the original image from it For the second wavelet the filtered image from the first stage is substituted for the original image and the second filter is applied the first filtered image is subtracted and this gives the second wavelet This process continues through to create the 6th wavelet leav
64. on b Move RGB Align Area This enables you to move the mouse and see the align area move and place it where you want it Sometimes the moving boxes leave a copy behind on the edge of the image This has no function and can be ignored c Define RGB Align Area The default align area is the size of the original alignment area selected on the Align page If this is not suitable this control enables you to define your own by pressing the left button and dragging out a suitable rectangle This defines the green box This box can be moved just like the default box Be aware however that if you do this you cannot reset the original default box but you can define one similar to it of course d Show Red Show Green Show Blue These control the visible image and enable you to see each colour separately or in combinations by removing the check marks B Buttons a Estimate This automatically estimates the shifts necessary to bring the colours into alignment and the offsets are shown in the four edit boxes b Reset This resets the offsets to zero c Eight buttons on the right hand side which will move the colours one pixel up down left or right and enable fine adjustments by hand if need be C Edit Boxes Four edit boxes contain the shifts in the red and blue channels and can be adjusted manually if necessary 4 Additional Options Three buttons and two radio buttons a Copy to Clipboard Copies the current image to the clipboard b Diff
65. pping The mouse can be used to drag out a rectangular box on the image causing the Use Cropping checkbox to be checked Then the image saved from here in bmp or jpg formats only or sent to the clipboard will be restricted to that rectangle Removing the check mark will cause the box to disappear and the full image will be saved Checking the box again will reactivate the same box even though it is not shown D Sizing A button Resize copies the button on the wavelet page Resized images can only be saved in bmp or jog formats RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 40 E HSL Three sliders control the Hue the Saturation and the Lightness of the colours throughout the image and a button 3 Hue Saturation Lightness x Reset HSL to reset them to their mid positions A check aua box Advanced HSL opens another window which gives access to very powerful colour modifying controls The window is divided into four sections the top section shows a histogram of the colours within the picture and the other three concern the three HSL components If the mouse pointer is moved over the image a bar appears in the Hue area indicating where on the histogram above it the pixel at the pointer contributes On entry the lower areas may be blank in which case drag the mouse across and a grid appears on which are control points between which the program constructs a smooth curve These control points can be dragged to produce a
66. see which gives the best result When using SER sequences RegiStax will automatically detect the debayer method from the file Dark Flat frames Darkframe Flatfield If you have created and loaded dark and or flat frames for use with deep Darktrame sky images the Darkframe and Flatfield check boxes will be enabled on the General Options tab Make sure they are checked to use the dark and F Flattield flat images you have loaded If the Dark frame came from a Raw modified webcam click the Raw box too to enable debayering Additional Options Luminance calculation Language setting Luminance ak bio cB iai d Bias subtract 0 289 55 0 587 By 24 Character set Font size Cluality filter Additional options Also the Additional Options control tab you can choose the formula used to calculate luminance As stated earlier the LRGB method means that the luminance image will be created and processed separately from the colour and then reapplied to the colour when processing has finished Luminance is normally calculated as 0 5xgreen 0 1xblue but expert users can change these factors here Language setting is on the Additional Options control tab and enables you to choose the language that RegiStax will use for controls Users can define these translations themselves by pressing the create button This will create a textfile lang XX1 txt where
67. t be as well aligned as others and some may not be of good enough quality If you open the stack list by checking the Show Stacklist check box you will see a list of all the frames in order of their quality judged by the criterion you chose on the Align page for Align point 1 if you are using processing the best the top of the list the worst the bottom If you click on name of a frame that frame will be shown in the image section Look at the first and the last frame and you will get a feel about how variable your frames really are and this may help you decide if you want to remove all of the poorer frames You can run up the list with the up arrow key to see more of them With MAP processing however be careful a generally poor frame may have quite good quality close to one alignment point and rejecting it might eliminate good data for one alignment point Now open the Stack graphs by checking the Show Stackgraph check box If you are doing single point alignment you will see a single graph with two lines on it If you are doing MAP processing you will see two graphs the upper one with a single red graph line and a lower one with two lines and an edit box below it In either case the horizontal axis is frames ranked in order as in the stack list the red line is the quality estimate and the green line is a plot of the differences in alignment a Stack graph x between each frame and the reference frame You can now desel
68. t of the slider changes colour Red EFF rame 18 for a disabled frame and Green for a frame that is Framed enabled for processing A grey square is a so called Ex Frame 20 dropped frame AVI only Frame 21 Frame 22 Frame 23 A Frame 24 Frame 25 Frame 26 RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 14 The main purpose of the align screen is to roughly align a set of frames with each other such that they may be further processed for example stacked into a composite image Alignment is achieved by matching similar features between frames If the image is too big to fit on screen then scroll bars will be used as is common in these cases with which you can adjust the view of the current frame However if you enable Colour the check box View full image the image will be LRGB shrunk enlarged so that the whole image can be seen in Automatic processing window without any scrolling RegiStax has two methods for alignment processing Method e Single point Default sinale e Multiple point C Multipoint Mane Or you can select none which allows you to proceed to the stacking stage without alignment Traditionally alignment has been done by identifying a point on the image and tracking it between all the frames However the nature of astronomical images captured in typically less than perfect atmospheric seeing means that aligning on only one point results in a sharp final
69. tarting the optimizer RegiStax will show a screen with the earlier recorded alignment information on quality and difference This will be presented for every alignmentpoint and the multi alignprogresswindow will again tell us how long this will take Registax processing AVI montes_apenninus_20030607_225446 avidropped frames Files Develop Project files File Version 4 0 1 0 24 10 2006 06 17 Select Flat Dark v Imagelnfo Save Load Save as Memory used 55MB From Clip Pause Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Final About Optimizer Limits Options Show graphs Create a Reference frame si Search area 214 pixels Single run optimizer WW Difference Frames to stack oa until mA s mj ree Movements Optimizer 2081114 Optimize Reference Current Processing 234 Quality Difference 4 optimizing 6 alignmentpoints c Optimizing 154 frames RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 7 12 After RegiStax has optimize all points it progresses since we used optimize amp stack directly to the stacking phase During this phase all frames and the recorded alignments are processed to form a stack image This has for every position in the image the sum of the intensities of all frames that have been used to stack and were selected for a particular alignmentpoint this is where multipoint differs greatly from single point processing The progressbar below in the s
70. tatusbar tells us how far we are with processing Registax processing AVI montes_apenninus_20030607_225446 avidropped frames Develop Project files File Version 4 0 1 0 24 10 2006 06 17 Select Imagelnfo Save Load Save as Memory used 55MB Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Final About Options Stack Colour Expand to maximum imagesize Show Stackiist Fast method Stretch histogram after stacking 7 Show Stackgraph use feather ot 5 pixels um Normalize intensity over frames Do not stack 24 pixels at the trame edge sacle oat oc 1 Stack options Save Reqgister Intearated Additional options AN Ew m sje EAE La Y 3 Final Stack size 168 352 288 RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 8 13 After stacking RegiStax progresses on to the waveletstage Registax processing AVI montes apenninus 20030607 225446 avidropped frames Files Develop Proiect files File Version 4 0 1 0 24 10 2006 06 17 Select Flat Dark Imagelnfo Save Load Save as Memory used 55 _From Clipb Align Stack _ Wavelet Final About ud Wavelet Resize Realign with Bs js Fitter Image Process DoAl processed Automatic View Full Image Show Processing Area RGB E Save Hold Wavelet Setting
71. than it is for resampling because not all the frames contribute to every pixel Interlace Some images are interlaced that is the odd numbered lines are transmitted first followed by the even numbered lined TV pictures are transmitted like this Select the choice that suits your camera so that RegiStax can remove the interlacing and use only real data For example if the size of the pixels was set to 20096 and the drizzling factor set to 2x we would simply get an enlarged image with enlarged pixels and no improvement in quality but no interpolation would be involved If the size is set too small there may be pixels in the enlarged image with no information in them giving rise to holes in the image RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 30 The Wavelet Stage Registax processing AVI Moon060716_004433 avidropped frames Files Project files Select Flat Dark Imagelnfo Save Load Save as Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Final About File Yersion 4 0 0 12 20 10 2006 11 35 Memory used 110MB From Clipb Pause Gamma inl x Cancel Resize Image Processing Image Markings Functions Histogram Wavelet Pr Do All Realign with Filter PETER Processed Automatic view Full image Show Processing Area n RGB Seve Hold Wavelet Setting Show Zoomed Show Alignment Points Balance es Image Wavelet options Foo CREDE D ES Wavelet
72. ty The idea here is that you click on each feature in the image that you want to use for alignment Each click will add an alignment point to the list in the multialignment window If you make a mistake you can delete the currently selected alignment point by Alignmentzones pressing the DEL key on your computer s keyboard Alternatively a rightclick of the mouse on an alignmentbox in the Estimate best Clear image will also remove the box from the list align points align points TIP Change the currently selected alignment point by clicking in distance 32 A Pixels the X Y or FFT column of the multialignment window between paints Alignment points need not be the same size You can change save Points Load Points the alignment box FFT size for the next point you add by clicking the size you want before adding the point Alignmentpoints Alternatively rather than manually choosing alignment points you can have RegiStax choose the points it estimates are the best To initiate this click the Estimate best align points button The number of points chosen by RegiStax will depend on the image itself the size of the alignment box and also the value entered in the Minimum distance between points control whose purpose is hopefully self explanatory Note though that the points chosen are only an estimation and it may be better to choose points yourself or use the list as a starter To see more detail in the
73. un adjusted frames Preview gamma and negative cannot be used at the same time If you enable Hold the gamma setting will be remembered if you process another file Goto Frame Change the number in this box to jump directly to a frame number Femeit o ax Another way to view the individual frames in the set Check all is to check the Show Framelist box at the top That will enable a pop up window listing all the frames you heck have loaded You can view a frame by clicking on it in the frame Empty List list The green check mark or tick by the side of each frame in the list shows that the frame is enabled for processing To remove bad frames from Frame 2 processing you should remove the check mark This Frame 3 can be done in several ways By double clicking the Em frame By single clicking the tick or using the keyboard by pressing the Space bar To disable or Frame 7 re enable a whole block highlight the first frame in Frame 8 the block by single clicking its name then press the S Frame 9 shift key and with this key pressed double click the Eb Frame 10 last frame of the block amp Frame 11 Frame 12 You can also move between frames using the Frame 13 keyboard left and right arrow keys on the slider at the amp Frame 14 bottom In that case the space bar also toggles 15 frames between being enabled and disabled The Pron pa Frame 17 square on the lef
74. ur short tour in RegiStax 4 the RegiStax manual will tell you more about most of the special functions that exist on the different stages On the next page you can see the best raw image we had the result of stacking and the result after using the wavelets RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 9 The result of stacking 150 frames The best raw frame The final result after using wavelets Page 10 RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Introducing RegiStax version 4 0 RegiStax 4 is designed to allow you to process a set of images typically combining them into a single composite image using the best of the set The RegiStax Window 1815 Project files File Version 4 0 1 0 22 10 2006 16 41 Memory used 46MB Imagelnfo Save as Align Optimize Stack Wavelet Fina Abou Method Alignmentboxsize Options Quality estimator Processing area T FF Colour PE Userdefined Alignment Box Method gn Manual Aligment Gradient z 512 64 512 show re _c zm iss 128 Lowest quality 20 Hold setting Show Zoomed Image s eee filter General options ffAdditional options Messages Automatic processing Limit E view Tull image v 4 b 2 General concepts RegiStax processing is divided into several stages each of which has a main screen of its own Each stage has its own tab at the top of the RegiStax window that when clicked causes the relevant
75. utton held dragging to define an area around your preferred feature that will be used for alignment Also on the Alignment options tab is the Processing Area Processing area This sets the size of the area that will be automatically updated during wavelet processing A larger area will cire 51 2 Pixels demand a great deal more memory It is recommended to leave the setting at the default of 512 At the wavelet Hold setting section the Do All button will process the full image so it can be saved The Hold check box will make RegiStax remember this setting RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 Page 15 Single point alignment When you have chosen the box size click on the image ona well defined feature usually one with high contrast is a good Colour choice For single alignment you will see the FFT analysis Align Mires window appear and the Registration graph that tracks progress of the alignment process T Automatic processing Here you can see another feature of RegiStax The next RE View full image logical processing step on the current screen is highlighted with a green bar At this stage the Align button has a green bar which means that you should click that button to begin alignment contrast this screenshot with the screenshot above Multi point alignment If you enable multipoint alignment the multialignment window will Multi Slignment Window pop up ulti Wlignmentmethod Simple Multi Giuianti
76. velet is provided with a check box a slider and a button The check box enables the wavelet the slider controls its enhancement and the button shows the value of the wavelet and displays the effect the wavelet will have on the image In the default scheme the wavelets themselves are controlled by the Initial Layer and Step Increment controls The Initial Layer is the width of the first wavelet Step is the increment from wavelet to wavelet a value of two makes the filter twice as wide as the first wavelet A step of 0 gives the finest control which is the best for the best images but for the run of the mill image a step of 1 is probably more useful Gaussian is an alternative method of calculating the filters which uses a Gaussian curve If this is chosen a set of edit boxes appears one for each wavelet The entries in these boxes control the widths of the wavelet filters so each can be set separately The algorithm is more flexible than the default one see Reference section below and the ability to adjust each wavelet separately from the others makes this a very powerful technique RegiStax 4 User Manual V1 0 avelet filter Default Gaussian Mawelet scheme 34 Dyadic 2 n Linear Initial Step Layer Be Layer Preview e 1 1 fd 1 0 OO M 2 2 on 5 1 0 M 3 3 012 j 5 5 oaa E 8 8 0 15 4 10 Load Save Schem
77. y be significantly noisier than the others and this may show on the final image It is probably better to remove this alignment point altogether The maximum number of frames finally remaining for the stack is shown in the status bar There are two schools of thought amongst astro imagers concerning how big stacks should be Some believe correctly that the more frames that are stacked the more the noise will be reduced and that it is better to stack lots of frames even if many of them are of poor quality Others point out that reduction in noise is proportional to the square of the number of frames stacked so that a very great increase in the size of the stack is needed to reduce the noise very much These workers prefer to cut out the poorer frames and accept a slightly noisier picture in return for a less blurred one However the final image obtained when poorer quality frames are included can often be better than that obtained when these frames are excluded especially when enhanced by wavelets Thus the temptation to weed out poor quality and poorly aligned frames should be resisted until you are sure that a better final image results Keep experimenting and see what produces the best result If you close the graph window and the stack list window if you still have it open you can check a box labelled Show alignment sections which will show you how the picture will be divided up between the alignment points and also produce a table of the alig
78. y graph based on the first alignment point the lower one can be selected to show the quality and difference plots for each of the alignment points The upper graph can be used to select the same number of frames for all the alignment points the lower graphs can be used to select frames for each alignment point individually It is wise to keep the number of frames for each alignment point nearly the same because large differences may result in noticeable differences in quality between the different areas in the final image Stack graph 4 Stack graph Difference Cutoff green line max 5 123 100 Difference Cutoff green line max 14 174 100 N a Ec i i PUR Td BE ime AE 1 1 ee a CN EM Quality Difference Quality Cutoff red line 100 Limit to maximum frameno 301 ln Quality Cutoff red line 100 Limit to maximum frameno 301 a Show additional alignment graphs OO a ee E single point a NINE E M Vlr M MN Ea A 4 L Frames to stack 302 Alignmentpoint Low quality 74 3696 Dif cutoff 6 38 3 Multi point Do not stack N pixels at the frame edge where N is selectable by an edit box Sometimes the edges of the frames contain more noise than the rest of the frame and this can result in a poorer quality image at the edges of th
79. ze Image opens a new window which gives an option of seven degrees of magnification from 10 to 200 and four different interpolation algorithms Choose the algorithm that best suits your image A button Original returns the magnification to 100 and another Save enables the resized image to be saved in bmp or jpg formats only View Stacksize causes the image to change to areas of grey which reflect the size of the stack for that area Moving the mouse pointer over an area causes the size of the stack to be displayed in the status bar Reference RegiStax uses a system called Wavelets Using the default settings Wavelet 1 contains information on the finest detail in the image wavelet 2 contains information on slightly coarser detail and so on So enhancement of wavelet 1 sharpens the finest detail in the image enhancing wavelet 6 emphasises the coarser details The page also includes a variety of other ways of enhancing the image In order to use the full power of wavelets it is helpful to understand how they work A detailed description is given in Appendix 1 Moving the mouse pointer over the image at any time displays in the status bar at the bottom of the window the x and y co ordinates of the pixel at the pointer along with the number of frames contributing to that pixel stacksize and the averaged intensities of the red green and blue components of the pixel The page contains a set of buttons the controls for the wavelets

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