New Scripts: PixInsight Toolbox

Juergen Terpe

Well-known member
Hello everyone,

I have written several scripts which might be useful especially for those of you using a OSC camera. The scripts are implemented especially to help beginners in PixInsight to produce good results but might also be useful to more advanced PixInsight users. All scripts are really simple, no rocket sciences, but helpful. The following 7 scripts are currently available:

AutoLinearFit: Does a linear fit on all three color channels and recombines them to the image again. You can choose the channel with the lowest mean (lowest signal) or with the lowest noise or just select the red, green or blue channel as a reference for the linear fit. This script is a time safer.
CreateHDRImage: Creates a second image, processes the HDRMultiscaleTransform on it and blends it with the original image. You can see the result of this in a smaller preview window and can easily adjust your HDR settings.
CombineImages: Combines two images using PixelMath, but without the need to understand PixelMath. Even for those comfortable with PixelMath this script might be a time safer. And you will see your combined image result as a preview.
ImproveBrilliance: You should create some previews of some regions of interest before using the script! Now you can select one of these previews and you can adjust the image contrast, the sharpness and other things to make your image look more brilliant. Switch between different previews to see your changes. Behind the scenes the script will extract the luminance from your image and will add contrast, a LocalHistogramEqualization and some sharpening before it combines the luminance with your image. All settings are limited to some useful ranges so you will not be able to do too much.
CreateHubblePaletteFromOSC: The script extracts Ha, OIII and SII from your OSC image and combines them as a Hubble Palette. You can select different schemes such as HOO, HOS, HSO, OSH... The resulting image will be stretched using the excellent GeneralizedHyperbolicStretch PixelMath expressions and you can change the symmetry point in relation to the mean value of the Ha, OIII or SII channel and also stretch the channels differently. The results of your changes are shown in a preview window, so you can adjust your changes until you are satisfied. Keep in mind that this script requires enough data, especially the OIII channel requires enough exposures for good results.
ContinuumSubtraction: Some targets like M33 have some details in Ha and you can add Ha to your RGB image, but it requires to subtract the continuum spectrum from your collected Ha signal to get a clean Ha signal (filters always also let pass small parts of the continuum). Select the narrowband image with the Ha (collected using filters such as the L-Extreme) and the RGB image of the target, both registered to each other. Now change the amount of the continuum to be subtracted and you will see the results of your changes in the preview. When satisfied with your changes the script will create a new image containing just the Ha signal.
CombineHaWithRGB: After subtracting the Ha you can use this script to combine it with the RGB image. You can reduce the noise by adjusting the black point of your Ha image and you can decide how much H-Beta (blue or together with Ha magenta) the final image should contain. The script shows a preview of your final result until you are happy with the results.

You can find the PixInsight Toolbox Scripts repository under https://www.ideviceapps.de/PixInsight/Utilities/ and it can be added using Resources => Updates => Manage Repositories. I hope the scripts are useful for you. I'm still working on a better documentation and will continue to work on the PixInsight Toolbox scripts.

Minimum PixInsight version is 1.8.9-1,

Best regards and clear skies!

Jürgen Terpe
 
Last edited:
Thanks a lot Jürgen,

I´m currently testing the ContinuumSubtraction and CombineHaWithRGB scripts. So far they look very good, real time savers. Before, I had to tweak variables in PixelMath, now is much easier.
 
Dick Berkhemer and Mirage502,

Sorry for your inconvenience. This sounds strange. Already a lot of PixInsight users from the "DarkMatters" discord server are using and testing these scripts without installation problems. Please check if the scripts menu does not contain a folder "Toolbox"? I will provide a new version soon with several improvements, not sure if this would perhaps solve your problems.

Its hard to find such problems when I cannot see it. Can you please check if my developer id is listed in the console? You will need to enter 'lscpd' into the console and you should get a list of all certified PixInsight developers. In this list you should see "JuergenTerpe", otherwise my certificate is missing. Please also check if you have the newest PixInsight version installed, which is currently version 1.8.9-1. Otherwise, I believe these script packages are ignored. Please let me know if this was the case.

Sorry and best regards,
Jürgen
 
I'm preparing another update for CreateHubblePaletteFromOSC, because I'm not satisfied with the workflow (too many sliders, hard to use depending on the signal quality). It still takes me some time for for testing, but I think I will finish this within this week.
 
I'm preparing another update for CreateHubblePaletteFromOSC, because I'm not satisfied with the workflow (too many sliders, hard to use depending on the signal quality). It still takes me some time for for testing, but I think I will finish this within this week.

Amazing job by the way! Thanks again!

Question about the "CreateHubblePaletteFromOSC" is it best to start with a image using a narrowband filter such as the IDAS NBZ UHS or L-Extreme?
 
Yes, both the "CreateHubblePaletteFromOSC" and "AutoLinearFit" are intended for being used with dual narrowband images. For Hubble palettes you will need a linear image with stars removed and some background noise removed in order to get some useful results.
 
The link posted above does not work, I get this when clicked….
F9992CF8-0745-488A-B312-1EC501B48657.jpeg
 
Hello
Link working fine in repositories. Scripts are working (not tested all)
Thanks for your work and many thanks to share with us.
Waiting to see updates from you
 
I just published a new version of the script package containing a few bugfixes and smaller improvements. Also included are all the user feedbacks:
1.) CombineImages now contains a button "Swap images" to revert the images useful for some combine methods.
2.) CreateHDRImage now contains an option "Protect colors" which uses an idea of Russel Croman to preserve the image colors using the HSI color model.

Some more ideas are in preparation, but will still take some time.

Regards,
Jürgen
 
Hello,

Ran through the usual installation steps. The scripts do get installed, see below, but are not "actionable" from the Scripts menu. What should I try?
Thanks (it looks promising :) )!

1666548674710.png


However, the Scripts menu doesn't contain any "toolbox" menu:

1666548750844.png


Running on macOS:
1666548789468.png


And the latest version of PI:
1666548829571.png
 
Hello,

Ran through the usual installation steps. The scripts do get installed, see below, but are not "actionable" from the Scripts menu. What should I try?
Thanks (it looks promising :) )!

View attachment 16261

However, the Scripts menu doesn't contain any "toolbox" menu:

View attachment 16262

Running on macOS:
View attachment 16263

And the latest version of PI:
View attachment 16264
Please disregard my previous message - I figured out the source of the issue and fixed it.

For the benefit of others:
  • scripts were installed in the expected disk location (/Applications/Pixinsight/src/scripts/...)
  • I went to to the Scripts > Feature Scripts dialog - the toolbox scripts were missing
  • I then clicked on the "Add" button - this is where I discovered that the folder it was pointing to by default was not the PI-default Scripts folder
  • I thus navigated from the dialog box to /Applications/Pixinsight/src/scripts/ which led to scanning the folder and actually adding the toolbox submenu and its scripts subitems in the expected PI menu

1666597225001.png


Done :cool:
 
Thank you for your investigations! I just wanted to answer your message with a few suggestions, but to be honest this issue was not on my list. Indeed, on a Mac the /Applications/PixInsight/src/scripts/ folder is the right one, but normally this is not changed. So I'm happy you found it and now it works for you!

Regards,
Jürgen
 
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