How do I use WBPP with multiple nights worth of data?

Jay6879

Member
Hello, I'm very new to Pixinsight so please bear with me here! My trail is almost up but I'm most definitely going to purchase a license. I started astrophotography a year and a half ago or so and I wish I had just jumped right into Pixinsight rather than dicking around with four other programs. This program is quite amazing! I've got a nice workflow down for processing planetary imaging in Pixinsight which pleases me to no end, Registax is just too archaic.

Right now I'm using DeepSky Stacker to preprocess and stack images for processing in Pixinsight. I find it really easy, Group 1 is the first night, Group 2 the second night and so on, I almost always image over multiple nights! I would like to consolidate everything into Pixinsight, it does it all, but I can't figure out how to stack multiple sessions using wbpp?!

Any help would be appreciated!
 
It depends if you have the same subject or different subjects.
I assume that you have the simplest case:
Multiple nights
A single calibration set good for all the nights (dark, flat, flat-dark and possibly bisa)

In this very simple case, simply put all the images in WBPP: you will get a single integrated image for each filter.

For more complicate cases (for example different calibration set for different night) you must learn using the "Grouping Keyword" that makes WBPP very flexible.

With @robyx we have done a free youtube video on WBPP: unfortunately it is in Italian, but with the automatic translation feature, maybe, you can get good information.

you can find it here.
 
It depends if you have the same subject or different subjects.
I assume that you have the simplest case:
Multiple nights
A single calibration set good for all the nights (dark, flat, flat-dark and possibly bisa)

In this very simple case, simply put all the images in WBPP: you will get a single integrated image for each filter.

For more complicate cases (for example different calibration set for different night) you must learn using the "Grouping Keyword" that makes WBPP very flexible.

With @robyx we have done a free youtube video on WBPP: unfortunately it is in Italian, but with the automatic translation feature, maybe, you can get good information.

you can find it here.

Apologies, I should've been more specific. It is one target across multiple nights. Darks and Bias frames remain the same however each night has its own flats and lights.

I will look into this grouping keyword feature, thanks for the info.
 
It depends if you have the same subject or different subjects.
I assume that you have the simplest case:
Multiple nights
A single calibration set good for all the nights (dark, flat, flat-dark and possibly bisa)

In this very simple case, simply put all the images in WBPP: you will get a single integrated image for each filter.

For more complicate cases (for example different calibration set for different night) you must learn using the "Grouping Keyword" that makes WBPP very flexible.

With @robyx we have done a free youtube video on WBPP: unfortunately it is in Italian, but with the automatic translation feature, maybe, you can get good information.

you can find it here.

Unfortunately the auto translate failed, in sometimes funny ways like this...

Screenshot-20220925-234253-You-Tube.jpg



Regardless, I've managed to get myself to the point of using the grouping feature and have failed that repeatedly. Here's the deal, I've got four nights worth of lights and flat, all piled into one folder named IrisNebula. I load everything in and it looks like this...

20220925-233101.jpg


After which I use the grouping Keyword "IrisNebula, as it's the name of the folder containing everything (is this the correct way to go about it?) The issue is that it seperates the files into two seperate groups...shouldn't it be four groups (representing each night)?

20220925-233119.jpg


Is this process the correct way to go about setting up for multi night wbpp? If not, what the hell am I doing wrong?
 
Unfortunately the auto translate failed, in sometimes funny ways like this...
This is sad, consider watching to this video from Adam Block


Anyway you should divide your files in different folders called

NIGHT_N1
NIGHT_N2
NIGHT_N3
NIGHT_N4

that contains the flat and the light rames for each night

keep the darks and the bias in a different folder not "tagged" by the keyword.

Finally use the keyword NIGHT only in Pre.
 
This is sad, consider watching to this video from Adam Block


Anyway you should divide your files in different folders called

NIGHT_N1
NIGHT_N2
NIGHT_N3
NIGHT_N4

that contains the flat and the light rames for each night

keep the darks and the bias in a different folder not "tagged" by the keyword.

Finally use the keyword NIGHT only in Pre.

That's it! It all came down to adding the underscore, appreciate the info and link to the video!
 
It depends if you have the same subject or different subjects.
I assume that you have the simplest case:
Multiple nights
A single calibration set good for all the nights (dark, flat, flat-dark and possibly bisa)

In this very simple case, simply put all the images in WBPP: you will get a single integrated image for each filter.

For more complicate cases (for example different calibration set for different night) you must learn using the "Grouping Keyword" that makes WBPP very flexible.

With @robyx we have done a free youtube video on WBPP: unfortunately it is in Italian, but with the automatic translation feature, maybe, you can get good information.

you can find it here.
Superb video, @astroedo and @robyx ! It would deserve a translation into English and more advertising within the PI community. The video is IMHO a fundamental advanced tutorial for WBPP.

That said, I two questions:
1. as you told in the video, you can leave the DARKS out of the grouping keyword (i.e. by not including them in the DATE directory) in order to have them applied to all the groups, and that works perfectly. I tried to do the same with BIASes, but it does not work. I have to create multiple copies of the same bias and embed it into each of the grouping directories (i.e by DATE) in order to have them applied to all groups.
To complete the information, I am using the BIAS to scale the main dark that frequently does not have exactly the same duration of lights.

2. An easier question, just to be sure: is this the correct file/directory naming convention to recognize correctly the keywords and to separate them?
KEYWORD1 valueofthekeyword1_KEYWORD2 valueofthekeyword2
that is: keyword and its value are separated by a space and the underscore _ is used to separate one keyword+value from the following one?

Many thanks, Mau
 
I believe my video addresses both of your questions.

1. It will work with biases as well. I think you may be encountering a different issue (a misconfiguration). You should generate screenshots of the WBPP panels (use the Diagnostics button).

2. The Keyword is the thing that is *common* to all of the objects (files) you want to consider grouping and the value is what distinguishes them. So it is Keyword_value1 , Keyword_value2...etc. Of course you can have more than one keyword- which means you are grouping files in multiple ways. However- this isn't as common but it seems to be what you were doing above. So yes, if you multiple keywords are in the path statement then what you have written is correct (with the two keywords having multiple values each). This might be confusing to someone reading this without context.

adam
 
I believe my video addresses both of your questions.

1. It will work with biases as well. I think you may be encountering a different issue (a misconfiguration). You should generate screenshots of the WBPP panels (use the Diagnostics button).

2. The Keyword is the thing that is *common* to all of the objects (files) you want to consider grouping and the value is what distinguishes them. So it is Keyword_value1 , Keyword_value2...etc. Of course you can have more than one keyword- which means you are grouping files in multiple ways. However- this isn't as common but it seems to be what you were doing above. So yes, if you multiple keywords are in the path statement then what you have written is correct (with the two keywords having multiple values each). This might be confusing to someone reading this without context.

adam
Thank you Adam.
I tried again today, changing the naming of the directories where the two image groups (where old and new images of the same subject), and all worked fine, included the group-independent biases.
The naming is now like this: FILTER_L-Pro_DATE_old, I use underscore as a separator between keyword and its value and between different keywords. Probably this was the point not working properly before, when I used spaces as well.

Thanks again for your advice, and for your gorgeous videos!
Ciao, Mau
 
Thank you Adam.
I tried again today, changing the naming of the directories where the two image groups (where old and new images of the same subject), and all worked fine, included the group-independent biases.
The naming is now like this: FILTER_L-Pro_DATE_old, I use underscore as a separator between keyword and its value and between different keywords. Probably this was the point not working properly before, when I used spaces as well.

Thanks again for your advice, and for your gorgeous videos!
Ciao, Mau

Hi Mau, sorry for the late reply I missed the notification.

@ngc1535 (Adam) replies was perfect, as usual, I only deepen the reply about the keywords:

As KEYWORD - VALUE separator you can use indifferently a space or an uderscore ( _ )

Therefore your syntax FILTER_L-Pro_DATE_old might define 3 different keywords-value couples in principle:

Keyword = Value

FILTER = L-Pro
L-Pro = DATE
DATE = old

WBPP is somewhat "stupid" (Sorry @robyx 😂 😅 ) and cannot understand which is the keyword by itself.

Therefore when you define a keyword in WBPP, it looks for that string in the file name and all the characters following the keyword and before another space or _ is considered a value.

I hope that this will make all clear.
 
Hi Mau, sorry for the late reply I missed the notification.

@ngc1535 (Adam) replies was perfect, as usual, I only deepen the reply about the keywords:

As KEYWORD - VALUE separator you can use indifferently a space or an uderscore ( _ )

Therefore your syntax FILTER_L-Pro_DATE_old might define 3 different keywords-value couples in principle:

Keyword = Value

FILTER = L-Pro
L-Pro = DATE
DATE = old

WBPP is somewhat "stupid" (Sorry @robyx 😂 😅 ) and cannot understand which is the keyword by itself.

Therefore when you define a keyword in WBPP, it looks for that string in the file name and all the characters following the keyword and before another space or _ is considered a value.

I hope that this will make all clear.
Ciao Edoardo,
thanks for your answer, that further clarifies the filename syntax and interpretation!

Mau
 
Back
Top