Mosaic Automation

@rixon Have you tried loading the lights per panel in separate sessions and then selecting "intergrate per session" for Multi-Session options in tab 6 and use all other configuration options necessary for mosaics?

Hi Wouter, Thanks! That worked great! It would be even better if all subs could be added all at once and that APP could sort out which went into their respective individual sessions if there was an agreed upon naming convention for the panels (e.g. Panel1, Panel2, Panel3). But this is still a huge time saver, so thank Mabula for that. 

Hi Wouter, So after using the above technique to produce separate integrations, it's not quite what I'm after. APP still takes a lot of time mapping the mosaic even though it doesn't combine the panels into a final one image mosaic. Would love it if mosaic registration wasn't part of this process. If I remove that mosaic setting in registration, it tries to register all panels as one image and of course, fails. 

Any other ideas?

@rixon Yeah mosaic registration can take a long time. I'm afraid that in this case you need to process the panels individually.

Perhaps an option "register per session" could be added that registers all lights in session 1, all lights in session 2 etc without cross-registering between sessions. @mabula-admin, what do you think?

Hi @rixon & @wvreeven,

The best way for now, is that you really need to make individual panels first yourself with normal registration and then afterwards combine those with mosaic registration. When making the individual panels, it is strongly advised to use MBB and LNC 1 st degree(not higher degrees!) to get rid of possible stack artefacts at borders. It is also strongly advised to not use any gradient removal tool like our Remove Light Pollution tool on the individual mosaic panels. Gradient removal tools never work perfectly and can in fact complicate gradients in such a way that when you create the mosaic the correction for illumination differences becomes more difficult 😉 This is from my own experience.

With regard to combining all subs as once to a mosaic, this is on our ToDo list to make possible which means i will completely rewrite the mosaic algortihms for this to make that possible in a smart and efficient way.

Hope this helps and explains it for now?

Mabula

Posted by: @mabula-admin

With regard to combining all subs as once to a mosaic, this is on our ToDo list to make possible which means i will completely rewrite the mosaic algortihms for this to make that possible in a smart and efficient way.

Great, thanks very much in advance!

Thank you Mabula! Looking forward to the rewrite. Good to know about your experience and recommendation with gradient removal too.

@mabula-admin 

Hi Mabula,

Thanks for the advice.  I'm curious, why not use higher than 1st degree LNC?   I use LNC when I shoot Alt/Az on a Dobsonian with no tracking, so I get field rotation and some drift, so even with Flats the registered frames have various differing gradients.  It seems to help, but I don't know how to understand when and what Degrees and number of iterations to use.   How am I to understand, without excessive experimentation, what to set them to based on my data?

Higher degrees and iterations get complicated fast and slows down the process. Usually it's not required to go higher, if the data has a lot of different gradients, then it is a challenge on its own for sure. I think the best bet then, would be to try to use the LP tool if multiple iterations. The algorithms in APP do expect some kind of logical gradient so that may be why it's not the best solution in your case and does require experimentation.

Posted by: @readyjetty

@mabula-admin 

Hi Mabula,

Thanks for the advice.  I'm curious, why not use higher than 1st degree LNC?   I use LNC when I shoot Alt/Az on a Dobsonian with no tracking, so I get field rotation and some drift, so even with Flats the registered frames have various differing gradients.  It seems to help, but I don't know how to understand when and what Degrees and number of iterations to use.   How am I to understand, without excessive experimentation, what to set them to based on my data?

Hi @readyjetty,

Using LNC higher then 1st degree on the single mosaic panels can actually make problems worse. The LNC algortihm is not a perfect algortihm and thus the higher LNC degrees can actually introduce unwanted gradients. The LNC 1st degree is in that sense safe since it will only introduce/correct linear gradients.

Mabula