Pre-processing script or doing it manually?

[stevek]

What's the consensus of doing this using the script compared to manually stacking and aligning etc?  I just feel a bit "detached" from the process using the script....
Thanks.

[msmythers]

After using Subframeselector or Blink to decide which light subs to toss out I use the BatchPreprocessing script to get a general idea of the image. I can look at the process console and see the noise figures for the stack. Since the script calibrates and registers the images I can then use the registered images with ImageIntergration to tweak for the best data quality. 2 or 3 iterations is all it generally takes for me and those iterations are literally done is a minute or two since I'm working from cached data.

Mike

[NGC7789]

As Mike stated, the "creative" part is in the ImageIntegration step where parameter tweaks can lead to improved results over the straight BPP script. But the script takes a lot of the grunt work out of creating dark, flat and bias masters and registering images. Of course I'm sure there are images where star alignment also needs manual intervention.

[RickS]

I used to do it all by hand and don't miss it.  As others mentioned, you want to do ImageIntegration separately and carefully.  On a couple of occasions I've had to tweak the registration, so I've used BPP for calibration only.  Apart from that I've not found any good reason not to use BPP.

Cheers,
Rick.

[jerryyyyy]

One - two punch:

1.  Run the script (get the registed calibrated images)
2.  Rubn Image integration on the registed calibrated and tweek the setting as needed.

BTW, IMHO I feel subframe selection is more important:  GIGO for you programmers out there.  I am currently setting the selection to reject half the frames....