From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>
Date: September 25, 2009 2:10:51 PM MDT
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Astro IIDC vs Registax
Hi doodlebun;
On 25-Sep-09, at 1:30 PM, doodlebun wrote:
I've used Astro IIDC for years now for planetary imaging but I thought it was time to do a comparison study. To do this I needed to convert the captured QT movie to an .avi movie. I wasn't able to figure out how to create an uncompressed avi movie from an uncompressed qt movie. So I just used the highest bitrate possible which created a 20 MB divx .avi file from a 350 MB Astro IIDC encoded QT movie. You can see the results side by side at http://gallery.mac.com/davidbleser#100176/Jupiter-20set-20three-209-19-09_2&bgcolor=black
Despite a lot of fiddling with parameters in Registax I could not get anymore detail from Registax. I will admit the ASTRO IIDC image is somewhat oversharpened to enhance detail.
I'd agree that it's a "tad" over sharpened :)
That's also why you get the edge issues too.
However Registax has a "dering filter" which proved desirable. When properly adjusted it smoothes the hard planetary edge to give a more realistic 3D appearance to Jupiter. Perhaps Milton can be inspired to include such a filter in a future release.
There is already something like that and has been since the Image Processing module was developed in Version 3.x
See page 57 and 58 of the Astro IIDC 4.0x manual on how to use the "The "Max:" threshold ..." field when Image Processing and applying sharpening. It restricts what gets sharpened, so that something with very high contrast edges(like stars or planet edges) isn't as over sharpened. I use it a lot for DSO images, to reduce the "white hole" effect on stars when sharpening.
HTH..
Milton J. Aupperle
President
ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting
Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist
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