Hello everyone,
I fully understand that the PixInsight team does not feel setting color balance with foreground star data is valid. However, that is not what this post is about. There are PI users who use G2V stars or the eXcalibrator process for color balancing. If you tried eXcalibrator and found it too difficult or had other problems, you may want to try version 4.1. With version 4.0, eXcalibrator became Much easier to use. And of course, it is still freeware.
EXcalibrator, versions < 4.1, had two problems with images calibrated and plate solved by PixInsight.
PixInsight rescales the pixel values from 0.0 to 1.0. I am guessing this allows some programming advantage. EXcalibrator expects data scaled as it come from the CCD sensor. In the case of 16-bit data, this is 0 to 65,535.
Fortunately, PixInsight offers a solution. After calibrating, registering and stacking your (L)RGB masters save a separate set as 16-bit unsigned integer. With this format PI scales the pixel values from 0 to 65,535 and makes eXcalibrator happy.
The second problem relates to images plate solved by PixInsight. EXcalibrator incorrectly determined the vertical flip orientation. Version 4.1 solves this problem.
Regards,
Bob
http://bf-astro.com/eXcalibrator/excalibrator.htm
