GreatAttractor

It turns out ImPPG's image alignment (via phase correlation) function comes in handy when trying to capture a video of passenger aircraft at cruising altitudes. My rig for the experiment was a SW Newtonian 114/500 (hence the coma visible in asymmetric highlights) on AZ4 + PGR Chameleon 3 mono (ICX445) camera: Raw video looked e.g. like this (scaled down): I cut out fragments with the plane constantly visible, converted to image sequences and run them through ImPPG. Airbus A321-211 Boeing 737 (click)

Nick, You could try ImPPG. I wrote it with solar material processing in mind (specifically - batch processing!), but also tried it on my Jupiters with good results.

ImPPG has moved to GitHub: http://greatattractor.github.io/imppg/ ImPPG performs Lucy-Richardson deconvolution, unsharp masking, brightness normalization and tone curve adjustment. It can also apply previously specified processing settings to multiple images. All operations are performed using 32-bit floating-point arithmetic. Supported input formats: FITS, BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF (most of bit depths and compression methods), TGA and more. Images are processed in grayscale and can be saved as: BMP 8-bit; PNG 8-bit; TIFF 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit floating-point (no compression, LZW- or ZIP-compressed), FITS 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit floating-point. ImPPG can also align an image sequence, with possibly large and chaotic translations between images (aligned output images preserve number of channels and bit depth). This can be useful, for example, when preparing a solar time-lapse animation, where subsequent frames are offset due to inaccurate tracking of the telescope mount. Other possible applications are smoothing out of terrestrial landscape time-lapses or preparing raw frames (with serious image jitter) for stacking. ImPPG is free and open-source, licensed under GNU GPL v3 (or later). Building from source code (C++) requires Boost, wxWidgets and (optionally) FreeImage & CFITSIO libraries and is possible on multiple platforms. Windows executables (32- and 64-bit) can be downloaded using the links below. See the README file for details on usage and building. Screenshots: Sample results (processing and animation alignment): Image processing tutorial Solar processing tutorial by Michael H.F. Wilkinson Astrobin users can add ImPPG to their “Gear” list: imppg Files: imppg-src.zip: source code imppg-win32.zip: Windows program (32-bit) imppg-win64.zip: Windows program (64-bit) If you are not sure what you need: download the latest imppg-win32.zip, unpack it and run imppg.exe. Version 0.5 and newer: go to http://greatattractor.github.io/imppg/ Version 0.4.1 (2015-08-30) Enhancements: – Numerical sliders use 1-pixel steps instead of hard-coded 100 steps – Output format selected in batch processing dialog is preserved – Unsharp masking not slowing down for large values of "sigma" – Increased the range of unsharp masking parameters Bug fixes: – Invalid output file name after alignment if there was more than one period in input name – Crash when a non-existing path is entered during manual editing – Program windows placed outside the screen when ImPPG was previously run on multi-monitor setup – Restored missing Polish translation strings imppg-src.zip imppg-win32.zip imppg-win64.zip Version 0.4 (2015-06-21) New features: – Image sequence alignment via solar limb stabilization – FITS files support (load/save) – Zooming in/out of the view Enhancements: – View scrolling by dragging with the middle mouse button – Logarithmic histogram setting is preserved Bug fixes: – Tone curve in gamma mode not applied during batch processing imppg-src.zip imppg-win32.zip imppg-win64.zip Version 0.3.1 (2015-03-22) New features: – Polish translation; added instructions for creating additional translations Version 0.3 (2015-03-19) New features: – Image sequence alignment via phase correlation Enhancements: – Limited the frequency of processing requests to improve responsiveness during changing of unsharp masking parameters and editing of tone curve Bug fixes: – Incorrect output file extension after batch processing when the selected output format differs from the input Version 0.2 (2015-02-28) New features: – Support for more image file formats via FreeImage. New output formats: PNG/8-bit, TIFF/8-bit LZW-compressed, TIFF/16-bit ZIP-compressed, TIFF/32 bit floating-point (no compression and ZIP-compressed). Enhancements: – Enabled the modern-look GUI controls on Windows Bug fixes: – Selection border not marked on platforms w/o logical raster ops support (e.g. GTK 3) Version 0.1.1 (2015-02-24) Bug fixes: – Blank output files after batch processing when L-R iterations count is 0 Version 0.1 (2015-02-21)

Thanks for the library name, looks very interesting. I wrote my one TIFF handling code because once I got annoyed trying to understand libtiff's API.

NOTE: This program has been superseded by ImPPG, which includes all the below functionality in a full-fledged GUI. Image Post-Processor performs Lucy-Richardson deconvolution, histogram stretch, gamma correction and unsharp masking. Both a command-line tool and a graphical user interface (GUI) wrapper for processing of multiple files are available. Discussion threads: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/230841-impp-%E2%80%93-batch-lucy-richardson-deconvolution-and-more-of-stacks/ http://solarchat.natca.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=13927 Building from source code (C++) requires Boost and wxWidgets (for the GUI) libraries and is possible on multiple platforms. Files: impp.zip: Windows command-line program, GUI and source code impp-src.zip: source code of the command-line tool impp-gui-src.zip: source code of the GUI If you are not sure what you need: download the latest impp.zip, unpack it and run impp-gui.exe. impp: version 0.3 (2014-11-30) New features: – better performance for large L-R "sigma" thanks to Young & van Vliet recursive convolution (Y&vV can be also forced by "--conv yvv")impp-gui: version 0.1.2 (2014-11-30) Bug fixes: - fixed output directory sometimes having the deepest sub-folder appearing twiceimpp.zip impp-src.zip impp-gui-src.zip impp: version 0.2 (2014-11-27) New features: – L-R deconvolution performance improved by 24%-40%, depending on L-R "sigma" and num. of threadsimpp.zip impp-src.zip impp: version 0.1.1 (2014-11-26) New features: – measuring time of L-R deconvolution – slightly improved performance – added MS C++ makefile Bug fixes: – fixed code that would crash with OpenMP with some compilers impp-gui: version 0.1.1 (2014-11-26) New features: – added MS C++ makefile Bug fixes: – fixed setting of output file name's extension impp.zip impp-src.zip impp-gui-src.zip Version 0.1 (2014-11-21) impp.zip impp-src.zip impp-gui-src.zip

imgalt – Image Alignment Tool author: GreatAttractor Written with solar animation frame alignment in mind. Uses the phase correlation method to detect translations of an image sequence, which can be widely varying, the images severely cropped – exactly what one gets after a few hour solar session with telescope buffeted by wind, drift due to imperfect polar alignment and lack of manual correction in time etc. The same method of image alignment is also included in ImPPG (starting with version 0.3). Discussion threads: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/214609-solar-animation-automatic-alignment-tool/ http://solarchat.natca.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11283 imgalt.zip: Windows program imgalt-src.zip: source code (requires Boost libraries; tested with GCC/G++ on Linux & Windows and with MS C++) Binaries and source code may be freely distributed and used for any purpose. See the README file for details on usage and building. QUICK START Imgalt is a "console application" (it has no graphical interface). Running from a console (a.k.a. "command prompt") is recommended, but not necessary. This method will work as well: Unzip the imgalt.zip, say, to folder "imgalt" on your Desktop. Copy all the files you want to align (in BMP or TIFF format) to the same "imgalt" folder. Run imgalt.exe; it will open a window which displays progress. After a few moments you will have new, aligned files (with names ending in "_aligned"), also in the same "imgalt" folder. More information in the README file. Version 0.5 (2014/05/22) New features: – sub-pixel alignment imgalt.zip imgalt-src.zip Version 0.4.1 (2014/05/05) New features: – support for TIFF files imgalt.zip imgalt-src.zip Version 0.4 (2014/05/02) imgalt.zip imgalt-src.zip Version 0.3 (2014/04/25) imgalt.zip imgalt-src.zip