CloneStamp Anchor?

[fatboy1271]

I see there are posts from over 8 years ago asking about this, so I didn't reply to them. I really want to know if the ability to anchor in CloneStamp was ever implemented? It is a great tool; however, it's incredibly annoying that I can't pick one spot to clone from. Holding a baby and trying to Ctrl click for ever star I need to work on is difficult, at best...

Thank you,
fat

[Niall Saunders]

Hi,

CloneStamp has no scientific or statistical benefit to a program such as PixInsight, hence the reason that its sole implementation was to try and repair very few, and very small areas at the end of all other processing steps.

Usung CloneStamp 'aggressively' either means that you do not have sufficent quality in your raw data, or that the other processes within PI are not being considered for use instead.

Note that I not saying "Don't use CloneStamp", rather "be very frugal in its use" and ask why you feel that it is your only solution. After all, PixInsight is not a painting program like those offered by Corel and Adobe.

[fatboy1271]

Hi,

CloneStamp has no scientific or statistical benefit to a program such as PixInsight, hence the reason that its sole implementation was to try and repair very few, and very small areas at the end of all other processing steps.

Usung CloneStamp 'aggressively' either means that you do not have sufficent quality in your raw data, or that the other processes within PI are not being considered for use instead.

Note that I not saying "Don't use CloneStamp", rather "be very frugal in its use" and ask why you feel that it is your only solution. After all, PixInsight is not a painting program like those offered by Corel and Adobe.

Hi Niall,

Forgive my ignorance but CloneStamp seems very important in making the Mask I'm working on. I'm not sure if you think I mean something more akin to what Clone Stamp in Photoshop is or not; however, I think we're talking about two different uses of CloneStamp.

fat

[Niall Saunders]

Hi again,

OK, so you are trying to make a Mask - I accept that, perhaps I should have mentioed it in my previous post. But, I maintain that my argument still stands - there is a huge difference between building the mask using actual image data, and building it using a 'painting tool'.

In other words you should only be considering using the smallest amount of CloneStamp effort on your mask. It could even be argued that the very nature of applying careful procrss control during the creation of your mask should allow you to eliminate the need for CloneStamp at all.

You haven't described the nature of the defect(s) you are trying to eliminate but, if you could, then perhaps the Forum mrmbers could suggest how they would approach it/them. I an certainly assuming that you have inherent flaws in yor raw data, but I don't know what they are, nor do I know what your calibration masters look like, nor how you are creating  and applyimg these. Maybe a change of workflow at this early stage might mitigate against the problems you are trying to eliminate later in your post-processing efforts?

[fatboy1271]

Hi Niall,

I appreciate your thoughtfulness! I'M currently working on M27. My data set is as follows.

Two nights of data:  11x600sec+11x600sec=3.667 total hours
Lights: 22x600sec@400ISO
Darks: 30x600sec@400ISO
BIAS:190+100=290
Flats: 100+100=200
Light Pollution: Downtown Los Angeles 20 miles SE...

I'm following Kayron's M31 tutorial on Light Vortex Astronomy.

• In section 4. Reducing background colour and contrast: "To modify the range mask, we can use the CloneStamp process. This process allows us to copy an area of the image and paint over another area with it. The idea is to copy a white area of the range mask and paint over the core and bright star cores so that these are also protected from our post-processing."
• After PixelMath: "We should now remove all the remaining stars and star halos in the combined mask image. For this, we can use CloneStamp again to copy black areas of the image over them, essentially deleting these stars and star halos. However, it is not a task for the faint of heart." "Remember that what is black in this combined mask image will not receive any boost to colour or detail contrast."

I can use PI but I wouldn't even consider myself a Novice, so better developing Masks would be great to understand! With that said, the second part, 'After PixelMath' is a daunting task to make everything but M27 black.

I'm attaching an image of the stars CloneStamped to protect them for when I work on M27 itself. Is this even a correct thing to do?

Thanks for taking the time to reply to me!!!
Patrick

[dave_galera]

This won't help if you are following a tutorial.....but food for thought........I use StarNet to remove all stars, then work on what is left i.e. the background/nebulosity etc, then add the stars back into the image, saves a lot of messing about with star masks 8).

And, of course, the extracted stars are nearly a perfect star mask.

[fatboy1271]

This won't help if you are following a tutorial.....but food for thought........I use StarNet to remove all stars, then work on what is left i.e. the background/nebulosity etc, then add the stars back into the image, saves a lot of messing about with star masks 8).

And, of course, the extracted stars are nearly a perfect star mask.

Hi Dave,

It is very helpful to know options! I looked in PI for it but didn't see it. Then I looked it up and it appears that it can be downloaded for PI; is that right? If you have a moment any useful info on StarNet would be awesome. Where to download, any resources on how to use it...

Thanks,
fat

[fatboy1271]

I found Nikita Misiura's Astrobin page that has a lot of info on it!

My next question, which I'm sure should be in a different post... Since I will be changing up this tutorial workflow that I'm using, do you have a suggestion on other tutorials that I should check out?

[dave_galera]

Also have a look at this PI thread for StarNet info:

https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=13691.0

Have you look on for tutorials:

http://www.pixinsight.com.ar/

[dave_galera]

Also check out Warren Kellers book on PI it describes the majority of the tools and give useful workflows

[fatboy1271]

Thanks Dave!!!

[Juan Conejero]

The CloneStamp tool has not been conceived or designed as a tool to paint images. Its sole purpose is to correct small-scale defects, residuals or artifacts cosmetically, replacing them plausibly with nearby data. By small-scale I mean structures smaller than the mean PSF of the image over the region being corrected, or small artifacts whose distribution and geometrical properties make them easily identifiable and removable without compromising the integrity of significant data.

In general, other uses of CloneStamp to paint larger image (or mask) regions are, well, painting. When applied to astronomical images, these procedures are contrary to PixInsight's underlying philosophy of image processing. If you find yourself in the need of painting an image or a mask, then the problem is in your image processing strategy (or lack of thereof), not in the image or in the data. Depending on how and why you apply them, exactly the same happens with tools that replace existing image data with invented data, such as StarNet. The only real solution to these issues is learning more about image analysis and processing. There are many online and printed resources to achieve this goal, which have already been pointed out by other users.

[fatboy1271]

Hi Juan,

Thank you for the detailed reply! I don't mean to be so uninformed but I'm here to learn I've been following a specific tutorial, which I will abandon, and therefore that is where my "knowledge" lies. The author of that tutorial suggests using CloneStamp as an alternative to using Photoshop to paint out certain things.

"... the problem is in your image processing strategy (or lack of thereof), not in the image or in the data." I agree!

Patrick