Help combining a two panel lunar mosaic in PixInsight?

[EMG]

Recently I bought a ZWO ASI178MM for planetary/lunar/deep-sky imaging and last weekend i had clear skies so I was able to capture videos of the moon in two panels. I have already processed the videos in AutoStakkert, I used 3x drizzle because I intend to print the image so now I have two 120MB TIFF images that i would like to combine in a two panel mosaic. I tried doing it in Hugin, a free panorama stitcher but the program crashes due to the file sizes being too large. I have searched for tutorials on using DynamicAlignment in PixInsight but it seems to me that i'll need a reference image to be able to create mosaics in PixInsight. Is there any way to go about this, I feel like this should be a pretty straightforward job but I am not very experienced in PI so I would really appreciate some advice.

 

I tried using DynamicAlignment as you can see in the attached screenshot but the result was just a cut version of the target image, aligned perfectly to the source image. It would be perfect if it didn't cut off the lower part of the target image.

[Altocumulus]

Hi,

Just a thought...

Have you tried using Microsoft's Image Composite Editor? That's free to use.

[ollypenrice]

4 hours ago, Altocumulus said:

Hi,

Just a thought...

Have you tried using Microsoft's Image Composite Editor? That's free to use.

I'd try that as well. Before you try it, though, have a good look at the areas of overlap and, ideally, measure their brightness in the same place.  Adjust one or both images to get them as close as you can and give ICE a hand that way.

Olly

[EMG]

I have heard good things about ICE but somehow I always thought that it was something you had to pay for. I just downloaded it and it works like a charm, thanks for the advice!

[Altocumulus]

👍

Do we get to see the end result?

Edited October 14, 2020 by Altocumulus

[EMG]

Certainly! After aligning the frames in ICE I adjusted the curves to brighten it up a little bit, after that I used the UnsharpMask tool to sharpen the surface features. I also added some black space to the right of the moon, it just didn't look right to me cutting off a part of the moon even though that half isn't visible.

[ollypenrice]

Seamless, well judged sharpening and a good call on the framing.

Olly