Hi guys.

Over the past 6 months I've often been asked about my planetary imaging processing routine, so I finally sat down over the last few weeks and put my routine down on (internet) paper.

I've written a tutorial on Planetary Imaging and Image Processing.

It's mainly aimed at intermediate level planetary imagers who are looking to go to that next level, but I expect there'll be a lot that even beginners can get out of it. Advanced planetary imagers would already know most of the techniques and advice offered in the tutorial, but who knows, they may pick up something to try as well.

The image processing routines explained will work just as well for ToUcam/NexImage colour cameras, as well as those using mono cameras with RGB filters. The only real difference is that those using colour cameras will need to split their colour bitmaps into seperate channels using RGBSplit.

It's a long article, but it details factors that influence hi-res planetary imaging, and it details every step of my processing routine with screenshots, and examples at the end.

My processing routine makes use of two new applications:

PCFE (PpmCentre Front End) - PCFE is a VB application that takes as input one or more directories containing BMP files, allows you to set options for ppmcentre, and it will run Anthony Wesley's ppmcentre program on the command line. ppmcentre is a tool used to crop, centre and rank the BMP files. PCFE takes the trouble out of running DOS command line programs.

RGBSplit - RGBSplit is a VB application that will take as input one or more directories containing colour BMP files, and it will split the bitmaps into their Red, Green and Blue channels, saving the resulting bitmaps into their own subdirectories.

Both downloads are about 2meg. The applications were written by IceInSpace Forum member Hitchhiker (Adam Bialek). He's currently working on a combined application (called PIP) that does both PPMCentre and RGBSplit in the one run, on the one set of directories. It should be ready in about a week or so.

The article is here: Planetary Imaging and Image Processing

If you have any questions or feedback, i'm more than happy to hear them.

Thanks

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Mike
. IceInSpace - The Australian Amateur Astronomy Community
. My Bio | My Jupiter 2007 Gallery | My Image Gallery

Hi Iceman,
Thank you very much for sharing your envious expertise :-), this article is a great help and incentive for the rest of us :-)

hi iceman
i want to thank you to for posting such a good post, am always looking for good info and how to process my movies this is a very big help thanks again man!!

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Well done, Very informative and basic to understand.

Thanks guys, I hope you get something out of it.

__________________
Mike
. IceInSpace - The Australian Amateur Astronomy Community
. My Bio | My Jupiter 2007 Gallery | My Image Gallery