Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

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Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Valery »

Hi all,

In continuation of yesterday’s conversation (discussion) about the unsuitability / suitability of Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes for photographing the sun in ultraviolet light, I would like to draw particular attention to the fact that often, many of our colleagues think in vain that such telescopes are not ideal or even practically unsuitable for photographing the sun with high resolution, also because it seems to them that in places where they are observing, the inappropriate atmosphere and such large telescopes are useless and will not give the results that they can give at ideal conditions. Quite often this is completely wrong and even with a bad atmosphere, with the right approach to restoring images destroyed by the atmosphere, it is quite possible to achieve very good or even excellent results.

Here I took the liberty of publishing of a stacked raw image sent to me by our friend Alfred Tan (Singapore) to process it and restore the information in it (destroyed by atmosphere seeing). You can see Alfred's raw image and the result of it's restoration.

The restored image tells us that even such heavily destroyed image can be restored to the level when we can estimate it as really good image. And if only this image contained a more impressive and more dramatic landscape of a sun surface, then we could even say: “Wow! This is a great photograph! Well done!”

Of course, some of you do believe that I do have a really excellent seeing conditions at my observatory location. This is a false belief. My observatory is located in a 4km from the center of the 400000 city, which is located at the 50m above sea level and surrounded by a windy hot steppe area. Poor conditions by any means.

I took image (taken by Alfred) as an independent case. Alfred described his present atmosphere conditions and estimated them as poor. His telescope is large enough - 11" SCT. And here you see how such a telescope can performs in such conditions with a low cost imaging equipment.


Conclution: hey, guys, all is not so hopeless with atmosphere and using larger telescopes in less than ideal conditions! Do not reasoning long and tedious about the bad atmosphere, that it is impossible to effectively use large telescopes in such conditions etc. Instead, just do it! Do not let these prejudices stop you. On the contrary, discard these prejudices and begin to move in that direction. Those who invest enough faith, their strength, patience, ingenuity, perseverance, time and a certain amount of money in achieving results will certainly succeed.
Go ahead!

BTW. Images are right clickable for a full resolution.



CS,


Valery
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Last edited by Valery on Sun Oct 20, 2019 8:16 am, edited 3 times in total.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Montana »

This is great Valery, however how do you stack your images? I have taken some lovely videos through the C11 and my eye can see all the detail but once I stack in ASK3 the image is a complete blur and nothing can be salvaged from the stack. I gave up and posted single frames at one point as they were infinitely better than a stack of even 1%. I fall down at the first hurdle and yet I know I can see the detail.

It is alright to say we can all do it but it becomes terribly frustrating after while when we are all stumbling in the dark. We need help, please share the method, then if we could all do it we would all be off to the shops and bankrupt buying all the kit ;)
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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Valery »

Montana wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 9:32 am This is great Valery, however how do you stack your images? I have taken some lovely videos through the C11 and my eye can see all the detail but once I stack in ASK3 the image is a complete blur and nothing can be salvaged from the stack. I gave up and posted single frames at one point as they were infinitely better than a stack of even 1%. I fall down at the first hurdle and yet I know I can see the detail.

It is alright to say we can all do it but it becomes terribly frustrating after while when we are all stumbling in the dark. We need help, please share the method, then if we could all do it we would all be off to the shops and bankrupt buying all the kit ;)
Alexandra
Alexandra, better if you will describe how do you stack your images with print screens samples of the AS3 settings etc. Then it is much easier to judge if you doing something wrong.

Valery
Last edited by Valery on Thu Oct 17, 2019 3:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by MAURITS »

Very nice explanation Valery.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

Game on! I am going to try and process this myself and describe my steps. That was the purpose of my Training File folder I created a whole back. Trying to replicate the works of Rembrandt teach us many valuable lessons.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by marktownley »

Can you describe the post processing you did Valery to get from the original to final image please


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Montana »

Just the usual Valery
ASK3 settings.PNG
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Kind regards
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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

I agree with Alexandra, the ‘usual’ is pretty standard. My only difference is I choose, ‘CROPPED’ and ‘IMPROVED TRACKING”. I’ve done lots of variations and I frankly don’t see much difference in AP SIZE or even 10/20/50/75 percent of images.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

I agree with Alexandra, the ‘usual’ is pretty standard. My only difference is I choose, ‘CROPPED’ and ‘IMPROVED TRACKING”. I’ve done lots of variations and I frankly don’t see much difference in AP SIZE or even 10/20/50/75 percent of images.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Carbon60 »

Being able to use my 250mm RCT with full size ERF more than a handful of times a year would be helpful, Valery. Your 'tricks of the trade' would be a very welcome addition to the toolbox.

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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

So I just downloaded Alfred's large image (I hope that was OK) and ran it through IMPPG. I was not able to get any kind of usable image anywhere near suitable for the next stage of processing...say in GIMP. I tried every combination of settings including some bizarre extremes.

Maybe I should not have attempted with the image in this thread, but my results...stank.

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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Valery »

Starry Jack wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 10:51 pm So I just downloaded Alfred's large image (I hope that was OK) and ran it through IMPPG. I was not able to get any kind of usable image anywhere near suitable for the next stage of processing...say in GIMP. I tried every combination of settings including some bizarre extremes.

Maybe I should not have attempted with the image in this thread, but my results...stank.

Jack
Jack,

You got the result, which you should have been getting. This image is placed here in a JPEG format only as an example of how much it was blurred by the seeing. For deep post processing, you need, of course, to use the original format with 16 bit data representation.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

That’s what I suspected. Dang. If he wants to post it I will host it.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Valery »

Montana wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:24 pm Just the usual Valery
Alexandra,

A few advices:

1. Cropped and improved tracking should be check in.

2. AP size not smaller than 56 - for such a movie quality. The worser the image quality, the larger the AP value should be choosed.

3. Before to place the AP greed see how good is the best image (it is automatically choosed and showed). If even the best frame image is poor, then likely no good results.
If during the imaging you see delicate details on the screen, then use short enough exposure time to freeze the seeing and get these details at least on some % of frames.

Hope this helps.


Valery.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by yltansg »

Starry Jack wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2019 3:20 am That’s what I suspected. Dang. If he wants to post it I will host it.
I have uploaded it to a shared folder in dropbox
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8iup2u7pba1x ... mMYAa?dl=0

Cheers.

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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

Alfred you good person you!

Ok...I got your file and put it into IMPPG. I had to use VERY high SIGMAs (maybe that's part of the secret) and these settings:
2019-10-17_21-17-21.jpg
2019-10-17_21-17-21.jpg (264.72 KiB) Viewed 2978 times

Then I brought it into GIMP for some more processing and ended up with this:
94920 1500f Alfred to Val to imppg to gimp.jpg
94920 1500f Alfred to Val to imppg to gimp.jpg (512.44 KiB) Viewed 2978 times


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by yltansg »

Good attempt, Starry. Thanks for sharing your process and settings.

I am always fascinated by the details that can be picked up with this configuration of my C11, even when the Sun is a blank disk.

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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by pedro »

Here are my results

Used the original tif image
IMPPG with sigma 3 (150 iterations)
Final processing Photoshop
Less aggressive processing
Attachments
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94920 1500f_IMPPG_gray.jpg
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94920 1500f_IMPPG_color.jpg
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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by MalVeauX »

Just looking at the stacked RAW, I knew it would process up to a workable image. Seeing conditions were clearly pretty good to me just seeing the RAW. When I see fairly smooth, high contrast edges on spicules, seeing is pretty much good. So processing this took very little effort, but that's because again, the seeing was good.

I think I too favor a little more softer processing.

IMPPG, high iterations, sigma 2.5ish, unsharp mask around 2.5
PSCS5.1: Topaz Denoise, High Pass 11 pixels (60% opacity), Unsharp mask (4pixels, 20%; 60% opacity), Levels/Color
BW.jpg
BW.jpg (262.12 KiB) Viewed 2861 times
Color.jpg
Color.jpg (352.97 KiB) Viewed 2861 times
Invert_BW.jpg
Invert_BW.jpg (292.31 KiB) Viewed 2861 times
Invert_Color.jpg
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Very best,


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

This is an outstanding thread. I am carefully looking at each attempt and learning. Great job to Marty and Pedro and of course Val and Alfred. I will try again taking some of the new techniques.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Valery »

MalVeauX wrote: Sat Oct 19, 2019 1:18 pm Just looking at the stacked RAW, I knew it would process up to a workable image. Seeing conditions were clearly pretty good to me just seeing the RAW. When I see fairly smooth, high contrast edges on spicules, seeing is pretty much good. So processing this took very little effort, but that's because again, the seeing was good.
No, Marty! Not even close to a good seeing. What does it mean - good seeing, see in the attachment. And every one can make this image WOW within a few steps in just unsharp masking in PS.

The image in question (Alfred's one) has been taken at really poor condition, may be when the seeing somewhat improved. And no wonder that you prefer to stop at a smooth and low resolution threshold. It is difficult to move any further with average processing technique.

Compare what you can extract from a good seeing image and poor seeing image. The scales are about equal.


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__2017 09 07  UT107-19 C11 Q-0,2 Proc.png
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__2017 09 07  UT107-19 C11 Q-0,2.png
__2017 09 07 UT107-19 C11 Q-0,2.png (3.67 MiB) Viewed 2828 times


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

Val,
Your sunspot image is indeed amazing, but I think we'd love to see your workflow to get it. Recognizing that every optical train merits slightly different treatment, I'd love to see how you went from the Raw Image to Stacking to LR Decon (if you do) to PS/GIMP. Just a comment about using the unsharp mask feature in PS just has too many open questions.

-What shape should the image be when it gets to the unsharp step?
-Do you use layers in PS like Marty is fond of? or do you process the main image itself?
-What is your full workflow?
-What settings in (including screen grabs like we are attempting) would be an amazing tutorial.

Cheers,
Jack


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Astrophil »

Very informative, Valery. Every tip and tidbit of information is appreciated. I too took the liberty of processing Albert's raw image as well as yours. These were both processed to bring out details and not to be aesthetically pleasing. The comparison hopefully shows how seeing may affect high res imaging. The scale and quality of the images were different so the processing numbers differed greatly and would be meaningless to post as a reference. My main objective while adjusting the settings was to maximize the visibility of the small squiggly hairlike features rather than an overall view.

Beautiful captures by the way.

Phil
Albert_seeing_not_so_good.jpg
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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

Nice work, Phil.
To make sure, asking for workflow is for a commonly available file such as what Alfred provided. Then the numbers and workflow are relevant. I would love for Valerie to post his raw sunspot file then his obviously lovely processing

Regarding the Alfred file, I love the softer-then-mine approach of both Pedro and Marty, but I may actually like yours best! Mind if you share how you did it?

Btw I tried unsharp masking on Alfred’s file and did not do it to much good effect. So I’m always looking for those ah-hah lightbulb moments in my brain. 😌


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Rusted »

I had absolutely no idea of the sheer power of imppg until now.
I could never get it to do anything useful until today. Not just by fiddling with the controls.
How, on earth, are beginners supposed to know what to do?
Taken in combination, the number of possibilities for the settings must be almost infinite!

Is there a "family" of settings which provide a useful base for making more rapid progress?
That might be far more useful to the majority of forum members.
Rather than vague generalisations about producing these specific "masterpieces."

We happily share details of our successful mods and equipment choices.
Why not show the same generosity in successful, initial, settings for processing software?
There may be countless solar masterpieces hiding undiscovered on member's hard drives.
We just need to know how to drag them screaming and kicking into reality.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

Rusted,
Your words cracked me up. I'm still chuckling

When I find a moment I will add my favorite tutorial links. But as you noted, they were hard won. There is a sub forum here which has tutorials listedbbut is is pretty thin.

Mark, Alexandra, The Great Attractor (creator of imPPG) and others all have excellent tutorials and there are many others on various forums.

Like I said, I will post what I have soon.

Cheers,
Jack


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by bart1805 »

Rusted wrote: Sun Oct 20, 2019 8:47 am I had absolutely no idea of the sheer power of imppg until now.
I could never get it to do anything useful until today. Not just by fiddling with the controls.
How, on earth, are beginners supposed to know what to do?
Taken in combination, the number of possibilities for the settings must be almost infinite!

Is there a "family" of settings which provide a useful base for making more rapid progress?
That might be far more useful to the majority of forum members.
Rather than vague generalisations about producing these specific "masterpieces."

We happily share details of our successful mods and equipment choices.
Why not show the same generosity in successful, initial, settings for processing software?
There may be countless solar masterpieces hiding undiscovered on member's hard drives.
We just need to know how to drag them screaming and kicking into reality.
But did you read the processing tutorial that goes with IMPPG?
Solar imaging is the same as every form of astrophotography. The processing part is equally important as the actual gathering of raw images, some say it is more important. There is no absolute strategy, but with the pointers Alexandra gave in her tutorial and for example the IMPPG tutorial, you already have the basic tools, start using them. But it will take a lot of time and energy to develop your own style and strategies. There is no absolute solution.
Try a radically different approach than seems normal. Try to understand exactly what each processing step really does with your image, don't just learn a trick.
Try in IMPPG for LR low sigma with really high iterations, dare to go really high. Do with unsharp masking the same (so low sigma) with a real high amount. etc.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Rusted »

I downloaded imppg ages ago.
I have no recollection of any "training wheels." ;)
Thank you for the reminder.
With all due apologies to Alexandra.

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94920-1500f sun soft pf rsz 600.jpg
94920-1500f sun soft pf rsz 600.jpg (49.52 KiB) Viewed 2479 times


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

Nice job, Gov. Glad to see IMPPG in your toolkit.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by pedro »



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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by MapleRidge »

Valery...

I have a question about a line in your original post on this topic, and I need help to clarify what you mean by "with the right approach to restoring images destroyed by the atmosphere".

By "restoration", do you mean in the selection/alignment/stacking process in order to produce the best raw file to process, or are you "restoring" images through the entire process form start to finish?

I only ask as I find the term and how to interpret it to be open to interpretation depending on how one reads it and looks at the topic.

Thanks for any clarification you can provide,
Brian


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Valery »

MapleRidge wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2019 5:24 pm Valery...

I have a question about a line in your original post on this topic, and I need help to clarify what you mean by "with the right approach to restoring images destroyed by the atmosphere".

By "restoration", do you mean in the selection/alignment/stacking process in order to produce the best raw file to process, or are you "restoring" images through the entire process form start to finish?

I only ask as I find the term and how to interpret it to be open to interpretation depending on how one reads it and looks at the topic.

Thanks for any clarification you can provide,
Brian
Brian,

Sorry, english is not my native language and may be I can't express exactly what do I mean. I wrote this headline as close as possible within my ability to express mysef in english.

Valery


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by MapleRidge »

No worries Valery, I just wanted to clarify if the restoration referred to the image alignment/stacking or the entire image processing sequence.

Brian


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Valery »

MapleRidge wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2019 9:56 pm No worries Valery, I just wanted to clarify if the restoration referred to the image alignment/stacking or the entire image processing sequence.

Brian
It referres to a full process. All stages and components are important.


Valery


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Freddie »

I take it that you have no plans to share details of your processing techniques with the solar community then?


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by bart1805 »

Freddie wrote: Wed Oct 23, 2019 9:15 am I take it that you have no plans to share details of your processing techniques with the solar community then?
Your second post is as contributing to the solar community as your first one. Welcome to the forum!
There is no such thing as a feee lunch, can you post a picture you made, maybe then we can give you some advise.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Freddie »

There you go. Only have this old WL image on this iPad no Ha images. Not looking for any tips in particular, just thought a thread basically saying “post processing is important” would go on to actually provide some details.

[The extension tiff has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]



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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Starry Jack »

Freddie, that is a lovely image!


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Montana »

Oh my g** Freddie are you going to give us some lessons?
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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Rusted »

Thank you very much Pedro.
Absolutely amazing resources!

I don't have Photoshop. So I use PhotoFiltre7.
Perhaps I should look at Gimp.


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Rusted »

Starry Jack wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2019 2:00 pm Nice job, Gov. Glad to see IMPPG in your toolkit.
Thank you Jack. :mrgreen:


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Re: Importance of the image restoration in the solar imaging.

Post by Rusted »

bart1805 wrote: Sun Oct 20, 2019 4:14 pm
But did you read the processing tutorial that goes with IMPPG?
Solar imaging is the same as every form of astrophotography. The processing part is equally important as the actual gathering of raw images, some say it is more important. There is no absolute strategy, but with the pointers Alexandra gave in her tutorial and for example the IMPPG tutorial, you already have the basic tools, start using them. But it will take a lot of time and energy to develop your own style and strategies. There is no absolute solution.
Try a radically different approach than seems normal. Try to understand exactly what each processing step really does with your image, don't just learn a trick.
Try in IMPPG for LR low sigma with really high iterations, dare to go really high. Do with unsharp masking the same (so low sigma) with a real high amount. etc.
Thank you Bart. I'll do my best. :D


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