Tutorial - Autostakkert2

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Merlin66
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Tutorial - Autostakkert2

Post by Merlin66 »

(Based on users and developers comments on other threads)

Basic intro:

Alexandra:....try and start with a simple picture, say one of your nice WL ones with a spot in the middle.

Start ASK2 up
Click open, and open your file
Click the dot to say 'surface'
Now go over to the picture frame and point your mouse over a nice spot
Press Ctrl and left click, the alignment box should now be on your spot (it can't do this if too close to the edge)
Now press 2) Analyse and wait
When complete go over to the picture window and make sure Multiple (MAP) is checked
Pick 40 for the AP size
Press the Place AP in grid button
On the main window I have 'use 30% maximum will be used' for Ha and 10% for WL (my personal choice for my quality data - you will have to suit this yourself.
press 3) stack

and wait awhile until it says 100% done
You will then find your completed file in a folder next to the avi, then use Photoshop to sharpen (or anything else)

It's very simple

*********************************************************************************

One of the most important parameters is the "AP Size". If you have lot of details then you should use many APs (so small AP sizes). But if you don't then you have to increase their size. Yesterday I had problems with an HA image with AP sizes below 100. But then I raised the value (up to 200) and it stacked well.

Registax














Autostakkert





There are basically two very important steps when stacking a surface recording in AS!2.

1) Image Stabilization
This isn't mentioned in the guide on my website, but you can now select which surface feature you want to track on to perform the Image Stabilization. Use Ctrl+Click to set a small rectangle around a promoninent feature. You can change the size of this anchor by typing a number 1 t/m 9 on the keyboard - not the numpad keys though - but usually this isn't necessary.

If you are unsure about the quality estimator you should use, use gradient size 4. This works most of the time. If you have extremely high quality data, you can experiment by turning it down a bit.

Press the Analyse button. After analysis has been completed, check to see if the Image Stabilization was successful by moving the slider at the top of the screen that shows the recording of the sun. It should be stable throughout the entire recording. If it's not, use Ctrl+Click gain to place it around another feature and use a larger anchor area. You can do this immediately after the first analysis, simply click analyse again to see if the changes worked.

2) The size of the APs. When you have a high quality recording with lots of small details (like the granulation in all these recordings) you can use a small AP size (25-40), but usually you are better of with a larger AP size. Test this out a couple of times, make different stacks with different AP-sizes (e.g. 200, 100, 50 and 25) and simply compare the results. You'll learn soon enough which APs to use.

You can already do batch processing as of version 2.0.0.46 (simply open more files). You are NOT allowed to place an additional image stabilization rectangle between processing though, so I would suggest to just keep the angle in the middle of the screen as it will probably work fine most of the time.

The crop mode saves images that are slightly larger than the red rectangle using the crop function (but in such a way that each pixel is made up of just as many frames as any other pixel, but it might be that the edges are a bit more blurry in case of those fine solar granulation images.


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