New Star Reduction Tool For Pixinsight

[Juno16]

Hi all,

I just saw this on lukomatico’s Youtube channel this morning and thought that some of you might be interested in it.




I must admit that I haven’t completely watched the video where the method creator explains tha Pixelmath behind the processes. Been a really hectic morning!

I did however, install the process icons and gave it a whirl just to see the results.

The Pixelmath processes were created by a fellow named Bill. I didn’t catch his last name, but he also has a Youtube channel (AnotherAstroChannel) that is linked from Luke’s video located here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtxCDf ... s147fO2lxA

I definitely plan to get more into this because the quick results that I saw with one of my images of M45 was really promising.

Bill has created four super easy to use icons to run the process.
One icon clones the image. Then, just run Starnet or StarXterminator on the clone to create a starless image. After the starless image is created, drag one of three process icons to the original image that you want to perform star reduction on and the reduction process is performed in seconds. There are three reduction methods with increasing levels of star reduction. Each reduction method process icon can be edited in Pixelmath and customized to yield the level of reduction/effect desired.

That is all that I had time to get to this morning. Sorry for posting such an incomplete and ruched report, but I have to switch gears to cooking cupcakes for my one year old grandson's birthday party tomorrow (sick wife).

Some of the bloated stars really are controlled much better with Bill's reduction process.

I really like this so far and definitely looking forward to working more with it.

If anyone tries this out, please post your experiences here!

[STEVE333]

Looks interesting Jim, thanks for sharing.

Steve

[STEVE333]

I downloaded his .xpsm file and saved it with the other .xpsm files on my computer. It then shows up when you open the list of Process Icons.

There are three different techniques included with a separate process icon for each one. In addition, each approach allows you to adjust the amount of "star dimming" (which isn't an option with EZ Star Reduction). All three work well and, if I want, I can try all three and just pick which one I like best. They run pretty quickly and don't waste your time. So far I haven't seen any artifacts after performing star reduction.

I will be using his approaches for star reduction in the future.

Thanks so much for sharing this with us.

Steve

[Jockinireland]

Hi Jim,

I missed this on your first post - I've been a bit AWOL recently for various reasons. looks good and I'll need to give it a go.

[Juno16]

Hi Jim,

I missed this on your first post - I've been a bit AWOL recently for various reasons. looks good and I'll need to give it a go.

Hi David,

I’ve been on a bit of a break too.

Interesting star reduction methods. If you have time, check out the whole video.

I’ve had great results on some images.

I hope that you can find the methods of some use.
Just another tool in the box!

[AstroBee]

I saw this yesterday as well and installed them. Very impressive. Bill's explanation of the three different versions is definitely worth a watch.

[Juno16]

I saw this yesterday as well and installed them. Very impressive. Bill's explanation of the three different versions is definitely worth a watch.

Sure is impressive.

It worked very well on rhe Bubble image. The stars were bloated, some halos, and just plain unattractive!
One iteratov Method 3 made a big difference.

If you have good success , please follow up on this or a new thread.

Thanks Greg.

[AstroBee]

If you have good success , please follow up on this or a new thread.

Thanks Greg.

I will if I ever catch a break in the weather.
I'm starting to think summer time astrophotography in the desert southwest is no longer possible.

[Larry 1969]

Can someone tell me where to download this?
I'm on my 45 day trial of Pixinsight and absolutely hating it right now. I'm looking for a reason to keep it and star reduction might be just that.

Thanks!

Larry

[Juno16]

I downloaded his .xpsm file and saved it with the other .xpsm files on my computer. It then shows up when you open the list of Process Icons.

There are three different techniques included with a separate process icon for each one. In addition, each approach allows you to adjust the amount of "star dimming" (which isn't an option with EZ Star Reduction). All three work well and, if I want, I can try all three and just pick which one I like best. They run pretty quickly and don't waste your time. So far I haven't seen any artifacts after performing star reduction.

I will be using his approaches for star reduction in the future.

Thanks so much for sharing this with us.

Steve

Hi Steve, @STEVE333

Sorry that I missed your response! I have been tied up with fostering a puppy and she has really kept me busy! She left this morning for VA to her new adopted home. I feel like I have nothing to do!

Thank you for looking at the techniques and giving a review of your experience. I have had a similar experience and actually have found that the results are far superior to what I previously used (EZ star reduction - Adam Block Star DeEmphasis). The EZ method really worked well, but Bill's pixelmath processes are really amazing and powerful. I really like how they each use a different approach at star reduction which can work wonders for all different types of star fields. One of the methods (I don't remember if it was method 2 or 3, did an amazing job at reducing bloating of the brighter stars in one image that I worked with. The bloated stars were really tamed down well. Like Bill said in the video, it worked somewhat like deconvolution.

Many thanks to Bill and many others for creating processes and scripts for Pixinsight that deliver the power of PI in much less complicated ways.

Thanks again Steve for trying the methods out and glad that you like them!

[Juno16]

Can someone tell me where to download this?
I'm on my 45 day trial of Pixinsight and absolutely hating it right now. I'm looking for a reason to keep it and star reduction might be just that.

Thanks!

Larry

Hi Larry,

The link is here:

Tool download:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... 9Pl0-iltRp

Just to let you know. The 45 day trial did little for me. Slow learner, I guess.

I am getting up there (years) and decided that I must learn it, so I just bought it about 1 1/2 years ago. I have learned so much and still have a ton of learnings to go!

BUT, it is truly an amazing application and my advice it to just go for it. You won't regret it!

[Larry 1969]

Hi Larry,

The link is here:

Tool download:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... 9Pl0-iltRp

Just to let you know. The 45 day trial did little for me. Slow learner, I guess.

I am getting up there (years) and decided that I must learn it, so I just bought it about 1 1/2 years ago. I have learned so much and still have a ton of learnings to go!

BUT, it is truly an amazing application and my advice it to just go for it. You won't regret it!

Thanks Jim!
I don't think I'm going to get very far in 45 days either. I want to buy it, but I need to see at least SOMETHIMG first. I really like the results of this star reduction! I've been working in the Veil Nebula region lately and APP's star reduction just seems to leave a ton of artifacts. Starnet V2 does a great job on removal, but I'm not looking for a completely starless image... This just might be the key!

Thanks again!

Larry

[AstroBee]

Look in the description of the video (on YouTube) posted in the original post.

[Juno16]

Look in the description of the video (on YouTube) posted in the original post.

Exactly!

The description area of YouTube videos is usually where link information is located.

@Larry 1969
Larry, this might be your best bet. Like Greg posted, look for the link in the YouTube description section. I just copied and pasted it in my earlier post.
Make sure to watch the video in the original post for installation info.
Good luck and let us know how it works!

[Larry 1969]

Look in the description of the video (on YouTube) posted in the original post.

Exactly!

The description area of YouTube videos is usually where link information is located.

@Larry 1969
Larry, this might be your best bet. Like Greg posted, look for the link in the YouTube description section. I just copied and pasted it in my earlier post.
Make sure to watch the video in the original post for installation info.
Good luck and let us know how it works!

Thanks, but I'm not seeing any installation instructions. Pixinsight has to be THE most user unfriendly software I've had the misfortune of using...

Larry

[AstroBee]

Larry, I'll admit that PixInsight has a pretty steep learning curve but once it clicks, it clicks. It's just different than any other type of software you've ever used in the past. If you think about it, if you had never ever used Adobe Photoshop and were just given it and told to go edit a photo, you can imagine how long it would take you to figure out how to do things. For example, Imagine you've never used Photoshop and someone asks you to crop an image, resize it and then convert it to monochrome. Super easy, right? because we've all grown up using PS. PixInsight is just like that, once you learn where the tools are and how to use them. The one good thing about PixInsight being so complicated is that it has a ton of great tutorial videos on YT that are free. Just like the one posted here by the OP. Personally, I think it's worth paying for a class like Adam Block's Fundamentals course. I have gone through that entire extensive course and still go back to it for refreshers.
The thing you want to do is start very basic and simple. I've been using PixInsight for about a year now and finally went into it kicking and screaming just like you right now. I was using DSS & Photoshop to begin with and then I found Astro Pixel Procesor and that took my work to another level. Well, PixInsight has brought my work to another level on top of A.P.P. But the thing is, you just have to get used to a node-based program vs layer-based Photoshop.
The other thing you have to realize is that PI. seems overwhelming when you click on the "Process" or "Scripts" tab and see all of the submenus, but realize, that to edit a really nice image, you only need about 3-5% of those features. There are entire, 10-30min videos on just some of those submenus. When you get to the point where you need to do something and know what it is you want to do, but don't know how...I guarantee you there's a YT video that explains it. And after you do that step a couple of times, it becomes second nature.
One thing I will admit to was being terrified of PixelMath. I was a horrible math student when I went to school some 40 years ago and I was so afraid my tiny brain couldn't wrap itself around PixelMath. It still can't all the time. It just so happens that these features in the video are "preset" PixelMath formulas. Even if you don't understand the math, which I don't, watching the video helps you understand what the numbers do and how to manually adjust them if you feel like you need to. Sometimes, rather than going into PixeMath and making an adjustment to the numbers, it's easier to just run the thing twice!
Now, regarding the "install" of this feature, there's really nothing to install. All it is is a PixelMath preset. Bill, the creator has done all the hard work for us. So what you want to do is figure out how to create your desktop presets, load these 4 presets to your desktop, and then save your desktop presets. Then when you relaunch PI, the presets will auto load for you. I realize I kinda glossed over the whole saving presets thing because it took me a couple of days to figure out how to do that too. If you would like, I'm happy to Zoom with you and share my screen so you can see how to do it and ask questions. I'll even share my basic desktop presets with you which will include the presets in this video. Let me know, PM me, or reply here and we can do it tonight or any time tomorrow.

[Juno16]

Look in the description of the video (on YouTube) posted in the original post.

Exactly!

The description area of YouTube videos is usually where link information is located.

@Larry 1969
Larry, this might be your best bet. Like Greg posted, look for the link in the YouTube description section. I just copied and pasted it in my earlier post.
Make sure to watch the video in the original post for installation info.
Good luck and let us know how it works!

Thanks, but I'm not seeing any installation instructions. Pixinsight has to be THE most user unfriendly software I've had the misfortune of using...

Larry

@Larry 1969

Larry,
Watch the video in the first post. Or, at least the first part. Starting at about 2:00 into the video, Luke explains how to download the methods from his Google Drive. Download the file "BillsStarReductionMethods_V2.xpsm" from GoogleDrive. Installation is just simply dragging the downloaded file "BillsStarReductionMethods_V2.xpsm" to the Pixinsight desktop.

Good luck and let me know how it works.

[Larry 1969]

Thanks for the help guys!
I have the icons installed. It now seems I'm having trouble with StarNet V2. I have used it as a stand-alone a few times and it worked well. I think I may have it installed in the wrong location. This text is in the StarNet documentation but I'm not exactly sure what it means...

Dependencies. The code depends on C API of Tensorflow and libtiff.

http://www.libtiff.org/
https://www.tensorflow.org/install/lang_c

Make sure that tensorflow.dll, tiff.dll and starnet_weights.pb
are in the same directory as starnet++.exe or somewhere in $PATH

I'm getting closer to actually performing a task with this software!
Thanks again!

Larry

[Larry 1969]

I watched a YT video about setting up StarNet to work with PI but I'm still getting errors...
The video showed 2 separate .pb files for weights. 1 for RGB and 1 for grayscale. I could only see 1 file called starnet2 weights.pb so I placed that in the PI "Library" folder and set the directory accordingly but I get this error..

Thanks again!

Larry

[starfield]

Thanks, for sharing this, Jim. I'm going to check this out.