This page is a continuous work in progress. It is a collection of links, tutorials, and notes I reference in my processing workflow.
Basic Pre-Processing
| Step | Process | Description | Links | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blink | Review light, dark, bias frames and discard any frames with significant artifacts. Rejection criteria: – Extreme star trails (i.e, due to tracking error) – Clouds that cover a significant amount of the image – Objects in frame (i.e., planes, trees) – Out of focus (i.e., stars appear overly large, have halos) Minor star trails can be left if they do not make up a significant portion of the light frames. | Rejection Artifacts | |
| 2 | Batch Preprocessing | Utilize weighted batch preprocessing to preprocessing and calibrate the frames. Use cosmetic correction to noise defects from sensor. (Optional) Perform image integration to have a quick preview of what the integrated result looks like. | ||
| 3 | Registration Frame Selection (Blink) | Review debayered and cosmetically corrected frames using the Blink tool. Identify a reference frame for registering all images too. Selection criteria: – Minimal star trails – Simple Gradients – Lots of visible stars | ||
| 4 | Star Alignment | Aligns all images to a reference frame. | ||
| 5 | Normalize Scale Gradient Workflow (Optional) | Normalize gradients in the image to a reference image with a simple gradient. | PixInsight Forum | |
| 6 | Integration | Stacks the images and rejects outliers according to selected algorithm. | N/A | ESD rejection algorithm |
| 6a | Generalized Extreme Studentized Deviante (gESD) Rejection | For large stacks of images utilize the ESD rejection algorithm. | NIST PixInsight Forum | My summarized notes. |
| 7 | Drizzle Integration (Optional) | Creates a higher resolution image by levering drizzle information. | Not currently compatible with normalize scale gradient. |
OSC Linear Post-Processing
| Step | Process | Description | Links | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DynamicCrop | Crops the image to the desired field of view. Useful for eliminating areas with poor contrast due to tracking errors. | N/A | N/A |
| 2 | Narrowband Color Synthesis (Optional) | Used for images collected with narrowband filters to extract luminance information corresponding to emission lines. Used as a precursor to creating images with synthetic color palettes (i.e., HOO, SHO). | ||
| 3 | DynamicBackgroundExtraction | Removes gradients from image to increase contrast of desired features to background. | N/A | N/A |
| 4 | PhotometricColorCalibration (Optional) | Balance Color Channels | PixInsight Photometric Color Calibration | |
| 5 | Deconvolution | |||
| 6 | Linear Noise Reduction | |||
Multi Filter Processing
| Step | Process | Description | Links | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | https://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorial-touching-up-colour-in-images.html | |||
| 2 | HDR | https://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorial-producing-an-hdr-image.html | ||