To all my overtired image processing compatriots:

I've been reevaluating my current processing workflow as most imagers have been doing in the last 12 months. Needless to say, Russell Croman has upended the amateur world with his new AI wonder plug-ins for PI. Not only does it work to get the best Deconvolution results, but it corrects for a lot of common optic aberrations too. Of course, the best raw data will always get the best results no matter what. Can’t make a pig fly…really. Not sure where this is all heading, but I'm seeing a lot more consistent and higher quality images being presented around the world by all beginning amateurs. It seems that a lot of the “secret sauce” is being replaced by the use of AI techniques and processing flows and the tedious ability to muck through PI’s shall we say complicated interface. I've been able to reproduce and better a few of my recent images with just a few (exaggeration) mouse clicks. It's kind of depressing like suddenly having all your Patents invalidated. I'm seeing lower quality images quickly roughed out into presentable master pieces as commented on my many Facebook posters. That's certainly a great thing for the amateur world but where else this goes, I'm not sure.

Will all our pictures look the same?

One button processing for many complex tasks for sure. My background is in computer science/engineering (software developer) and can pretty well see where this is heading. I've pretty much stayed on the bleeding edge my entire life. As most of us, I wanted to see how a couple of images I published last year on Astrobin held up vs processing with new AI/NETS. Of course, I've been using Topaz tools and StarNet for several years already and I’ve been mucking about testing BlurXTerminator since the day it was released. All I can say is WOW! I shot this test image Tuesday night. It's not a perfect or complex image but simply a test image with good SNR. Pretty simple test but here it is with a few mouse clicks. I've also reprocessed my best M51 and its significantly better. Almost the same settings for M51 and process as this simple Whale example. More on that later.

This Whale without its companion was in the frame's edge while focusing on a shot of the Hockey Stick. I was going to discard because it didn't contain the companion, but I was struck how it came out. I was focusing all processing on the hockey stick and before my crop I took a look. I was working on my technique with BlurXTerminator for Galaxy work. Only processing in PI followed by final color tweaks in DXO PhotoLab 6 which I always use for final color adjustments. Pretty much just an ASTAP stack at the remote observatory (it’s dark), transfer to my home desktop then PI: ImageSolver, PCC, LocalHistogramEqualization, BlurXT, NoiseXT and Photolab 6 tweaks and export. This is my streamlined work flow since I'm imaging from a data limited satellite link at the remote observatory and I don't try to spend endless hours at the processing desk, kind of like being a quick street artist. By the way, I built a new hi-end desktop with an Intel I-9 with that pretty much screams with a high-end GPU. It takes less than 12 seconds to run a typical BlurXTerminator pass on the QHY268 data and less than 60 seconds on a QHY600 image. It’s an absolute requirement for the new workflow, especially on the larger QHY600 sensors.  I’ve also upgraded my computers at the remote observatory as well to quicken the stacking operations on the larger data sets.

My philosophy over the last year has been to optimize my imaging time at the SOFAR remote observatory. I have trying to capture reasonable images with my AP155 as fast as possible. I have spent some time working on minimizing the integrations required and luckily, I have Bortle 1-2 skies at the remote observatory.  Galaxies in general are pretty bright so over integrations in broadband are a waste of time. The whale probably only needed a couple of hours to obtain an excellent SNR @ f7, but I had the data anyway. Our seeing at the remote observatory surprisingly is not fantastic or great ranging between 2-3 arc seconds. These are real numbers measured by my SBIG seeing monitor and Unihedron SQM meter installed at the observatory. It’s not on an isolated mountaintop. What's very surprising to me is the how my AP155 keeps punching above its weight class. I've tried not to over process my images, of course that's hard sometimes. Even when the skies jump to 3-4 arc seconds as they will do, the final images seem pretty good to me.

Over the last year I have been focusing on galaxies no less than 7 arc minutes in size. I've pretty much been just picking a few larger popular targets because I've imaged many of them previously with my C14 HyperStar over the last 15 years.  I've managed to capture about 75 processed targets in 13 months at the remote observatory that I uploaded to astrobin. There are quite a few more that didn’t make the cut. I still have 10 targets to process from the last 5 months.

This year I will be splitting my time between new galaxies, a few widefield objects on the tandem mounted 92mm/QHY600M/NB and some re-processing of the last years images with PI and BlurXT. It's kind of exciting for newbies, but depressing for me.  I have about 7 years of excellent quality remote imaging data from dark skies that have the potential for reprocessing with BlurXT.  I will probably just punt and move on to new things.  I have multiple options regarding scopes and may move on to my larger and longer focal length scopes, I'm just not sure my business is finished with the 155. NB is great, but probably best suited for those imaging from the city. It's difficult for me to justify 25-hour integrations at this point in my journey. There are so many other targets I can capture quickly with the new generation CMOS cameras........

John