Hi all,
New versions of the PixInsight Core application and PCL packages are now available for download:
http://pleiades-astrophoto.com/download/The Core and PCL packages are available under Linux x86 and MS Windows. This version is very close to the incoming first commercial release. It includes the following main new features:
New Remote File Download FunctionalityPixInsight is able now to download image files in any supported format from remote locations via the HTTP and FTP protocols. This can be done in one of three ways:
- The new
File > Open Location command on the main menu. This command opens a dialog box where you can enter an URL with optional user authentication data (user name and password).
- The
open command. This command fully supports now specifying URLs as its source arguments. For example, you can enter this command at the command line:
open http://pleiades-astrophoto.com/tmp/SimplexNoise/01.jpg- By
dragging a link to PixInsight's workspace, for example from the URL bar of Firefox or your favorite web browser. However, this functionality is still experimental, especially on Linux. It will be fully functional in the next version.
New AutoSave PSM FeatureNo more process icons lost due to system crashes! The new AutoSave PSM feature automatically writes all existing icons to a .psm disk file in the background, while you work with PixInsight normally.
By default, the auto-save interval is 30 seconds, and the .psm file is written when any changes are detected since the previous auto-save event. The AutoSave PSM feature is active even during running processes, so it is virtually impossible that you loose icons due to an eventual crash.
Temporary PSM files are created on the swap files directory. By default, unless you configure it otherwise, this directory is the system TEMP folder (the directory pointed to by the TEMP or TMP environmental variable). You can change it with the new Preferences process (see below).
New Preferences ProcessPreferences is a global process (Global category) that allows you to customize hundreds of important settings that affect the whole PixInsight platform. You can define startup program settings, directories and network operation settings, parallel processing settings, and custom colors and fonts for virtually all interface elements of the PixInsight GUI, just to name a few items.
To access the Preferences interface, you can double-click the Preferences process item from the Process Explorer (Global category), or select the Edit > Global Preferences main menu item.
Preferences is still a work in progress. You'll probably note a few color and font settings that don't work immediately when applied (in particular, this happens with some settings for processing interface windows). However, Preferences is perfectly usable right now.
New Script Main Menu ItemActually, this menu item was introduced in the previous version, but it has not been officially announced till now. The Script menu can be manually configured to include a number of selected scripts for quick access and execution.
The PixInsight JavaScript Runtime (PJSR) is a fantastic tool box to create powerful tools with easy-to-use, versatile user interfaces and powerful image processing capabilities. To demonstrate this, we have included a number of interesting sample scripts that are automatically added to the Script menu upon installation.
One of these sample scripts is
FFTRegistration, a sophisticated, FFT-based image registration system with optional corrections for translation, rotation and scaling. FFTRegistration can register and combine thousands of images in a completely automatic way, and has been written entirely in JavaScript around the PJSR. Take a look at
this thread to see this Jupiter image with raw data by Mike Salway:
This image has been entirely processed in PixInsight, including the FFTRegistration script to register and combine 900 raw images for each color channel.
Also try out the Spherize script, a funny tool to render any image on a projected sphere, and DrawSignature, a script that writes an arbitrary text with selectable colors, fonts and dimensions.
Have fun!
