Basic Processing Shortcut

[Jack Harvey]

Once you have opened an image to begin processing here is a time saver.  Rather than go to the Process Explorer time and time again to get many of the tools used for every basic process, set up a set of Basic Processing Icons.  Open the image(s), load the Basic Processing Icons and click on each conveniently located icon that you have already configured in many instances for how you use it.  My current set includes STF, AutoHistogram, DBE, Background Neutralization, Color Calibration, Histogram, Curves, Color Saturation.  You may have others but these are ones I use on almost every image.  This is easier than filing thru the Explorer for me.

[avastro]

Hi Jack
Could you please tell me how you set up a set of processing icons, your tip is great but I should first  create the set of my basic icons.

Cheers

Antoine

[Jack Harvey]

Sure.  In process explorer bring up the STF window for example,  I like to check the lower right check mark on the window so it easily applies to which ever image is open.  Now drag the processing triangle to the workspace (not on an image) and an icon forms.  Right click on the icon and use Icon Identifier to put a name you will recognize on it "STF".  Now bring up Histogram from process explorer and I again apply the lower right checkmark for same reason as above.  Again pull the process triangle to workspace and a new icon appears, name it.  Etc using whatever you like to use most of the time.  Once you have a bunck of icons there click and hold the mouse and draw a blue square around them to make them a group.  Right click and choose left align if you want them perfectly aligned.  Now right click and Save Icons to a folder you can find later.

When you open a new window and have an image loaded, ready to process, Right click workspace, or go to Process icons under process in toolbar and select Load Icons.  Navigate to your set of icons and load.  To use the icons now click on them and the processing window appears.  Use it as you normally would.

Harry, did we miss a video on icons and process containers<G>

[avastro]

Hi Jack
Really smart!
I'll do that and save some time for processing.
Thank you

Antoine

[sleshin]

Hi Jack,

Great tip. Thanks for providing the how to details.

Steve

[Jack Harvey]

Glad you like it.  Once you have saved your first set of icons, you may decide you want others so just load your first set and go through the exercise to create the additional icons and then just re-save the icon set and the new ones will be there.  I added HDR with the usual iterations and check boxes, and Deconvolution set up like I usually use it to my Basic Set.  For example:


Now by clicking on any one of the icons I get the processing window for that procedure.  Then continue as you would if you had gotten the processing window from Process Explorer.  One advantage is the icons retain any settings you put in them before saving them.  These settings can be changed before you apply the process to the image if you like.

[Simon Hicks]

Wouldn't it be cool if you could add Script icons to this mix......some of the Sample Scripts get used a lot....PreviewAgregator etc.

[cfranks]

Nice tip Jack, thanks.  One small thing I find is the name you create has to be one 'word'.  A space in the new name gives an 'Invalid Identifier' msg.

Charles

[Niall Saunders]

"one word" names,

Yes, and the name has to start with an 'alphabetic' character, i.e. a letter

But, you can use the 'underscore' character < _ >, but not the 'dash' character < - >

The method I use (the same as I use when creating variable names when I am programming) is to use CAPITAL letters for the first letter of each word.

So, as a crude example, Clone Stamp would become CloneStamp.

If you look at the <All Processes> drop-down menu list, you will see that Juan also uses this same method - so, in fact, all the processes ALREADY have a NamingConvention set up for you.

HTH,

[Niall Saunders]

Continuing with the idea originally put forward by Jack,

Perhaps if all the 'boilerplate' or 'blank' icons had their name preceded by the 'underscore' character, this would help remind you that these were just 'blanks', i.e. not 'real' processes that you might have already configured and used on an image.

Just a thought, although I am still waiting for Juan to give us a 'floating', user-configurable, "Favourites" selector box

Cheers,

[Jack Harvey]

If you right click and choose Select All Icons you can then move them to wherever on the workspace - almost like a floatable favorites<G>.

As you can see on my icons I also use the Capitol letter for each new word convention.

[Juan Conejero]

Just a small contribution to Jack's excellent use of process icons.

You can tell PixInsight to automatically load your psm file each time you launch the core application. To achieve this, you just have to modify your startup.scp file. This is PixInsight's startup script, and is executed automatically upon startup.

startup.scp is a plain text file. You can edit it with a good code editor, as PixInsight's script editor for example. This is the step-by-step procedure:

1. Open the Processing Console window.

2. In the command line (the one-row line of text with a blinking cursor), type this command and press Enter:

Code: [Select]

open $PXI_COREDIR/startup.scp
3. This will open the startup script file in the Script Editor. Scroll to the end of the text. The script ends with the following lines:

Code: [Select]

.export avgdev="ImageWindow.activeWindow.currentView.image.avgDev()"

#endif   // !__NO_PJSR_VARIABLES

// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// EOF startup.scp - Released 2009/11/13 17:24:00 UTC
4. You have to insert a new line of text to open your favorite psm file. For example, the last script lines would look like this after the editing operation:

Code: [Select]

.export avgdev="ImageWindow.activeWindow.currentView.image.avgDev()"

#endif   // !__NO_PJSR_VARIABLES

.open C:/path/to/file/MyBasicProcessIcons.psm

// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// EOF startup.scp - Released 2009/11/13 17:24:00 UTC

You must change "C:/path/to/file/" to the actual folder path on your computer, and "MyBasicProcessIcons.psm" to the actual file name of your favorite icons file. The "C:" is for Windows only; it is not used on Mac OS X or Linux.

The leading dot in ".open" is to mute all console messages from the open command. In this way it will execute in a completely transparent way. If you want to have open telling you that is has loaded the psm file, remove the dot.

5. Press Ctrl+S to save the file (Cmd+S on the Mac).

6. Exit PixInsight and launch it again. Now your psm file will be loaded automagically

Tell me if you have problems with this procedure. The only difficult bit is step 4 where you must write the file path to your psm file.

[avastro]

Hello,
That worked just fine for me (Vista 32b).
Great tip, thanks

Antoine

[mmirot]

Ok don't forget to add this to Wiki someone... ?Juan

Max

[Jack Harvey]

open. /Users/coyyote/Desktop/PixInsight Icons did not work in my Mac?  No file exists.  So something is wrong with the path.