Clive Posted June 27, 2020 Share Posted June 27, 2020 I downloaded the demo version of Startools V1.6 to check it out and compare it to my current processing software. It's running on my laptop (Windows 10, I5 processor) but it seems to take ages to do any single task on the 4000 x 6000 pixel image I was using to try it out. Is it just that I've got a slow PC? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bottletopburly Posted June 27, 2020 Share Posted June 27, 2020 2 minutes ago, Clive said: I downloaded the demo version of Startools V1.6 to check it out and compare it to my current processing software. It's running on my laptop (Windows 10, I5 processor) but it seems to take ages to do any single task on the 4000 x 6000 pixel image I was using to try it out. Is it just that I've got a slow PC? Bin image Clive 50% so usually you Auto dev first this highlights any anomalies such as stacking artefacts ,keep ,now bin image to suit i usually bin 50% on the nikon ,keep ,Crop to suit and keep now Wipe image and keep ,now autoDev again using a ROI on the main area ,play around with ROI until you find a result your most happy with and keep now work through the modules left to right ,once image binned it should run quicker unless you got a super fast pc . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Posted June 27, 2020 Author Share Posted June 27, 2020 I think I understand (some) of that so I'll give it a try, but are you saying I need to reduce the image resolution by 50% before doing any processing? Bottletopburly 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bottletopburly Posted June 27, 2020 Share Posted June 27, 2020 1 hour ago, Clive said: I think I understand (some) of that so I'll give it a try, but are you saying I need to reduce the image resolution by 50% before doing any processing? Yes clive ,quote from startools website The Bin module puts you in control over the trade-off between resolution, resolved detail and noise. With today's multi-megapixel imaging equipment and high density CCDs, oversampling is a common occurrence; there is only so much detail that seeing conditions allow for with a given setup. Beyond that it is impossible to pick up fine detail. Once detail no longer fits in a single pixel, but instead gets "smeared out" over multiple pixels due to atmospheric conditions (resulting in a blur), binning may turn this otherwise useless blur into noise reduction. Binning your data may make an otherwise noisy and unusable data set usable again, at the expense of 'useless' resolution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Posted June 27, 2020 Author Share Posted June 27, 2020 I see what they are saying but my 'test' image was the image of Cygnus I posted earlier. Taken with a 50mm lens, as I understand it, it's heavily undersampled so in theory could benefit from the opposite of binning, ie drizzling, which would make the image even larger and presumably even slower to process. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bottletopburly Posted June 27, 2020 Share Posted June 27, 2020 All I can say Clive is bin and see how it goes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bottletopburly Posted June 28, 2020 Share Posted June 28, 2020 Funnily enough Clive I just had an invite to startools 1.7 Alpha which seems to have had some work done on GPU acceleration, this makes StarTools the first fully GPU accelerated processing application for AP, I will have a look this week . Clive 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red dwalf Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 i have just upgraded to startools 6 myself, and was told version 7 is due out soon so that will be a free download and upgrade, as for binning and resolution, i stack with deep sky stacker and usually 2 x drizzle the data, then save it as a 32 or 16 bit tiff file before using it in startools, after auto dev in startools you usually bin the data 50 % making the data more usable, if you are using deep sky stacker you can also load up the saved 32 bit file that deep sky stacker stashes away in the files folder. the data can still look a little noisy until you stop tracking and use the noise reduction tool in startools which i find is amazing for cleaning up images Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Posted June 29, 2020 Author Share Posted June 29, 2020 49 minutes ago, red dwalf said: i have just upgraded to startools 6 myself, and was told version 7 is due out soon so that will be a free download and upgrade, as for binning and resolution, i stack with deep sky stacker and usually 2 x drizzle the data, then save it as a 32 or 16 bit tiff file before using it in startools, after auto dev in startools you usually bin the data 50 % making the data more usable, if you are using deep sky stacker you can also load up the saved 32 bit file that deep sky stacker stashes away in the files folder. the data can still look a little noisy until you stop tracking and use the noise reduction tool in startools which i find is amazing for cleaning up images Correct me if I'm wrong but surely 50% binning of a 2x drizzled image results in an image that is identical to (if not slightly worse than) the image you would have got if you did neither. Doing neither would also speed up the processing time, especially in DSS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red dwalf Posted June 29, 2020 Share Posted June 29, 2020 If you drizzle the pixels and stars will look smoother and more rounded than without depending on camera and pixel size, binning after just reduces size of image, the amount of noise and I've not noticed any down side using the binning process, some noise will remain but startools cleans it up easily at the end of the process Bottletopburly 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bottletopburly Posted August 31, 2020 Share Posted August 31, 2020 Startools 1.7 currently in alpha stage with general release eta Oct/nov , hoping ivo will do an online talk after mentioning Stargazerslounge do a stargazine talk and ivo is up for it so I am hoping in the near future we will see a Startools talk hopefully sgl admins will be up for a talk 👍. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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