Script to align, integrate and calibrate

[Nocturnal]

I'm not sure PJSR is the right tool for the job. The modal nature of the dialogs really turns me off from writing complex dialogs. Once the super-duper stacker script runs you can not use PI for anything else. If you want to examine the result you need to close the dialog so you need to have some kind of filelist save feature so you don't have to start from scratch each time. And then you have to basically copy all the parameters from the processes you use into the script. It'll be huge.

I'm sorry to be pessimistic about this, someone please explain how this realistically can be done.

[mmirot]

Sander,  I would rather see it all as standard feature in the modules. 
Juan has not seem to be to interested in this.
For some reason Juan suggest it could done in a script. Perhaps he was just speaking from fatigue

Max

[Niall Saunders]

Sander, Max,

Yes - I also agree that this feature would be better served as a PCL module, not as a PJSR script. Unfortunately that would also restrict the number of people able to code the process in the first place. I am sure that there are folks like me who can work with PJSR, but who have no idea where to start in PCL.

This may well have to be something that the likes of Juan works on - with guidance from users like us. This allows the interface to 'mature' naturally. It is certainly NOT a process that needs to be rushed, after all we have been able to calibrate in PI for quite some time now (even before the advent of the ImageCalibration process) - it just takes a whole lot of 'manual effort'.

I am willing to wait several more PI 'cycles' if needs be.

Cheers,

[mmirot]

'It just takes a whole lot of 'manual effort'.

That's and understatement.

Any improvement in the modules would be helpful. There is a lot of feature that I thought would be basic.
For example, just about every program I have ever used allows you to choose a set of images to automatically produce a master as part of basic cal.

Also, if the modules where able to work serially in the process container we might not be having this conversation !

Max

[Niall Saunders]

Hi again Max,

Just bear in mind how PixInsight is developing - the very concept of image calibration is very much an afterthought. The fact that you CAN calibrate and integrate image data in PI is testament to Juan's herculean efforts. Even with the hard manual effort currently required to achieve full calibration and integration in PI as things stand just now, I still believe that the final outcome (due to the technology 'behind the scenes') still outperforms other packages in the marketplace.

Like I said, I would happily wait another year for a full-blown calibration and integration process. At least I would know how it had developed, and would have had a say in the way I wanted to see it work.

Don't get me wrong, if I had the tiome and ability to put this together myself, I would - gladly. But I don't get to retire for a few years yet, so - unless my Lotto numbers are due for an appearance, I have to keep hammering the keyboard for 'someone else' in the meantime

Cheers,

[Nocturnal]

Hi,

if it would be possible to save settings for the calibration, alignment and stacking modules then the script wouldn't need to deal with those. It would simply instantiate the processes which in turn would load their default settings and receive file lists from PI. This would be doable in PJSR as this is a short lived window. It would still need the ability to save file lists and parameter settings though. Ouch.

[mmirot]

It needs to hand off the processed image set from cal to, alignment then intergration. It should use current settings, this would include choice of reference image. It would nice to calibrated version of the reference frame.

The abilty to calibrate to flats and make masters from within the cal module would be very helpful.

Hopeful Juan is reading this.

Max

[RobF2]

Yes - as much as I love PI, when I've got limited data that's unlikely to benefit from the extra Smarts, I give in to temptation and just throw it all into Maxim's nice Stack routine.

[mmirot]

That's the problem most people give up on it and use something else insted.
Not as user friendly as many packages.

Max

[Nocturnal]

If you're on Linux or FreeBSD your choices are limited and you'll use what you can. On Mac there's Neb2 which is a little easier to use but not that much. On windows there are plenty of options.

[David Raphael]

I am willing to write this in PCL if I am not duplicating someone else's efforts. 

I like the ease of DSS, but I DO get better results when I go through Vicent's calibration steps. And I really enjoy working with PixInsight in general.  It appeals to my inner software developer 
So - here is my question:  Will I be duplicating functionality that is already going to be built in PI in the near future?  And is anyone else already doing this?

Let me know - we can agree on what the basic requirements will be, and I will start coding...


Cheers,
Dave

[Nocturnal]

Hi Dave,

I'd wait with tackling this until it's possible to bring up individual process GUIs through either PJSR or PCL. Without that you'd end up most of your time replicating GUI items from all the processes you need to integrate. That or it should be possible to save process options and restore them later. Perhaps this is possible by having the user create a process container that contains all the processes with their options. I assume it's possible to read Process container contents from PCL and PJSR. It's a bit of a cludge but could save significant development time.

[Carlos Milovic]

Hi Dave

I don't think that this will be developed by Juan (or me) in the shot/mid term. AFAIK, we both are more of "divide and conquer" guys than "do it all".

Having said that, almost everything is currently working as separate processes. So, a script to automate everything should not be too hard to create. Of course, there is the problem of working with large arrays of data, with "unknown" format, and one wants to have everything inside the same code. So, it should be well organized.

On a parallel note, I'll be writing a process module that performs some of this tasks, in a much more simpler way. I have to calibrate and align microscopic image for a project I'm working on the university. I may release the code of the "preprocessing" steps, in a month or two. The workflow shares some steps, but then it diverges and needs other steps not applicable to astronomy. Anyway, if anybody wants to write something from the scratch, this may help a bit.

[David Raphael]

So maybe PCL isn't quite ready to do this in a re-usable sort of way?  I am not really familiar with PCL yet, but I guess what you are saying is, for example, I can't load the ImageIntegration module's UI portions from another module?

[Nocturnal]

No, I don't think that's possible. I recently started a new thread about that.

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=2202.0