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FarmerDave
sage
Reged: 09/07/07
Posts: 415
Loc: Northern Virginia
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I read through this thread a couple of days ago because a) I was bored at work, b) I had exhausted all the forums I normally read, and c) I sling code. I didn't have anything substantive to add, having all but abandoned C and doing little work on *nix.
However, while searching for something completely different, I stumbled across two different sets of code for "astronomical image processing" called XVista.
They're based on the same common parent, haven't been updated in years, and are in ANSI C for Unix-flavored OSs:
http://ganymede.nmsu.edu/holtz/xvista/
http://spiff.rit.edu/tass/xvista/
I didn't do more than look over the pages - I didn't see any stacking programs per se, but thought I'd point them out as there might be some source code or ideas you could "borrow."
David
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Celestron C6/C9.25/CG-5GT Mount
Orion 80ED/EON 72/Supercharged Atlas EQ-G
Garrett Optical Signature Series 10x50, 15x85
Canon 40D/T1i/XTi (unmodded)
Meade DSI/Meade DSI Pro/Philips SPC900N
Ford 1944 2N/1948 8N
Bahtinov Mask Generator * AstroCataLink * EOSInfo
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jedimasterk
sage
Reged: 01/30/06
Posts: 255
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Quote:
Jeff, nice to see someone stepping up to the plate. I was cringeing inside when you said you wouldn't be supporting TIFF. 24 bits just is not enough color depth to do much with. TIFF gets used a lot becuase it can handle 48bit color. 24 bit posterizes rapidly if you stretch the levels, but 48 bit puts up with a huge amount of manipulation before it starts to degrade. I really think you should consider handling 48 bit color, just my 2 cents.
On the flip side, I'd be happy to play guinea pig when you have something ready to test 
dave
I agree!!. Support Tiff. If you want to be like the big boys, on the Windows side.
Linux needs some killer astronomy apps that are useful, if it ever plans to compete with the Windows platform, for amatuer astronomy. Or heck get recognized by Sky and Telescope and Astronomy magazine enough to write an article about Linux and astronomy. Stellarium, and Celestia are fun to look at. KStars is about the best and most useful app out their for Linux. But it's only one app. And Gimp doesn't come close to Photoshop, and never will. None of the newer distros carry XEphem, any more, so what else is their?. Glad your developing something for Linux.
Edited by jedimasterk (12/18/07 01:16 AM)
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astrotrf
Not at all Mundane
Reged: 09/30/07
Posts: 1447
Loc: Rodeo, NM
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Quote:
Stellarium, and Celestia ... KStars ...
I know that none of the folks who write this stuff will ever read this, but my pet peeve with the Linux authors is that they never consider writing software so other Unix platforms can use it, too. The build process inevitably uses odd, non-standard Linuxy stuff, &c., and so does the code, so that the level of effort to build the software for other Unix systems is often too high. It's easy to use standard tools and write code that works on virtually any Unix system.
But to keep this on topic, for the astronomical community, an image-processing program really needs to support FITS. It's what the pros use, and image-capture software (like CCDSoft) can be made to emit it.
Quote:
None of the newer distros carry XEphem any more ...
True, but it's still downloadable, and you should be able to build it easily. And Elwood did it the right way; it builds on lots of Unix platforms. Just because the Linux distributions don't include it doesn't mean it's not useable.
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Terry (astrotrf)
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JBull
sage
Reged: 10/10/05
Posts: 401
Loc: Dallas, TX
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I have two versions of software written now, one version for PNG and the other for TIFF. The challenge I'm working on now is putting the two together. I'm adapting the functions for registration and stacking so they operate on 16-bit rgb pixel values on the heap without regard for input file type. In essence the job is to make the register and stack functions independent of the input image file type. That will make it easier to support more file types down the road such as FITS or other. I hate to even think about learning another image library after just now getting a handle on libpng and libtiff. And GTK+ is kicking my butt.
Working with my test images on Linux has caused me to switch from Gimp to Cinepaint. Cinepaint supports the 16-bit per channel (48-bit per pixel) images nicely. I had problems with Cinepaint from the Debian package and could not save an edited 16-bit image without error. Installed it from source instead and it works perfectly.
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Jeff Bullard
Dallas, TX
Check observing forecast for astronomers anywhere in the world:
http://astroforecast.org:8080
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astrotrf
Not at all Mundane
Reged: 09/30/07
Posts: 1447
Loc: Rodeo, NM
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Quote:
However, while searching for something completely different, I stumbled across two different sets of code for "astronomical image processing" called XVista.
Dave,
Thanks for pointing this out. I'm going to check into these to see what they do. Maybe there's some hack potential there.
*Ford* tractors? Flame suppression on ...  
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Terry (astrotrf)
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astrotrf
Not at all Mundane
Reged: 09/30/07
Posts: 1447
Loc: Rodeo, NM
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Quote:
http://ganymede.nmsu.edu/holtz/xvista/
http://spiff.rit.edu/tass/xvista/
The NMSU XVista is in FORTRAN, and truly has the most execrable build process I've ever seen on a Unix system. It would be *far* easier to rewrite it than to teach it to accept another architecture. Completely bletcherous.
The RIT one is in C and has the nice clean build process you'd expect, with just one minor bug. Unfortunately, it has a very limited idea of what displays it will work with in terms of color depth, etc.
However, the various image-processing functions are broken out into separate programs, which makes it especially nice to study and to borrow code from. This is the one to get!
And if you want your application to be nice and cuspy, RIT XVista's build process is the one to emulate!
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Terry (astrotrf)
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FarmerDave
sage
Reged: 09/07/07
Posts: 415
Loc: Northern Virginia
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Quote:
Thanks for pointing this out.
YW
Quote:
The NMSU XVista is in FORTRAN,
Whoops! Like I said, I didn't read the pages thoroughly.
Quote:
*Ford* tractors? Flame suppression on ...
Okay, you can dis' my scopes, but my tractors? That's hitting below the belt. I needed to move some stuff, so I went outside after lunch and fired up the 8N on the first try. Not bad for a 59 year old tractor.
David
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Celestron C6/C9.25/CG-5GT Mount
Orion 80ED/EON 72/Supercharged Atlas EQ-G
Garrett Optical Signature Series 10x50, 15x85
Canon 40D/T1i/XTi (unmodded)
Meade DSI/Meade DSI Pro/Philips SPC900N
Ford 1944 2N/1948 8N
Bahtinov Mask Generator * AstroCataLink * EOSInfo
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groz
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 03/14/07
Posts: 1766
Loc: Duncan, BC
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Quote:
Okay, you can dis' my scopes, but my tractors? That's hitting below the belt.
David
Cmon, everybody know, _real tractors_ come with GREEN PAINT.
Ok, i'm going to hide for a while now.
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Tom L
Reged: 01/07/04
Posts: 31037
Loc: Sunny Oregon
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Tom 
Tele Vue 102mm f/8.6 on an EzTouch
Vixen 80mm f/5 A80SSWT on a grab-n-go mount
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Olivier Biot
Amused
Reged: 04/25/05
Posts: 24589
Loc: 51°N (Belgium)
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For the record, if you're considering a move towards Gtk+ for the UI, you may as well start thinking to use GLib.
In a previous life I contributed code to a popular open source network protocol analyzer (Ethereal, now known as Wireshark). It's entirely written in C, and makes extensive use of GLib for portability and guaranteed data types (e.g. guint8 is an 8 bit unsigned int). The UI is entirely written in Gtk+ and works on various platforms.
For the record, Ethereal/Wireshark runs on a host of OSes, be they free or not. You may want to offer your stacking suite to a broader audience than you initially envisioned
Good luck with this endeavor!
Cheers,
Olivier
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I think you're worth a double serving of happiness!
Tal-200K (#199) with JMI NGF-Mini2M focuser on GEM3 • Astro-Tech AT80ED • Orion Sirius EQ-G with wireless EQDIRECT • Astro-Tech Voyager • Celestron Regal LX 10x42 • Helios 15x70
ATM projects: 14" f/5 truss Dobson: first light Jul 1, 2011  - currently in 'tweak & widget' mode
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daev
Technically Enlightened
Reged: 03/10/04
Posts: 6587
Loc: On the edge of the desert
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Been over a year since we've heard anything on this... Jeff, any updates? I'm chompin' at the bit for some linux software that will register images. It's been kinda tough to source software for astro pursuits. Cinepaint doesn't have a .deb for any of the latest Ubuntu builds, but I think I've managed a work-around. One of these days I really should get to the point where I know what I'm doing
dave
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"Yes, I know it's flat here. When the seeing is good you can stand on a beer can and see Toronto...."
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