Is This a BUG, FEATURE or Just My Way Of Thinking

[AngeloM]

Hello: There are two items in my wish list.

1. Sliders within the Live solar planitary imaging Stacking and Enhancement Tools.
The Gaussian Wavelet Sharpening sliders...

Level 1 Slider - I usually tun off because it just over sharpens everything.
Level 2 - 4 Sliders always worked very well for me.
What I'm unhappy about is how a few revisions ago the FINE slider changed and also became much too agressive; almost like the Level 1 Slider was. The 'FINE' slider used to be a small detail sharpener; but now I don't use it at all because if I move it just a tiny bit to the right it over sharpens everything; like the Level 1 Slider use to do.

QUESTION: Is there some way to restore the Fine slider to a less agressive sharpening method?


2. File Names: Whatever I type into the Target Name field before starting and after starting a live stack does get included into the file name of Snapshots taken by clicking the 'Snapshot' button. However once a live capture begins, changes to the 'TARGET NAME' Field do not get incorporated into file name captures taken when clicking the 'Save as seen to PNG or save to 16 bit TIFF' Buttons.
So many times I've worked hard on a live image and then remember I forgot to type a more descriptive name in the Target Name: field.

QUESTION: Is there not some way changes made to the 'Target Name" Field can dynamicly change the file name without having to quit a live capture and starting the whole process over again?

Thank you for reading through my message.

Thank you for SharpCap. It is the Astro Imager's Swiss Army Knife.

Michael

[admin]

Hi Michael,

the details of which levels you need to use to get good results depend on how much detail you have in the image at different scales in the first place, which will depend on the degree of oversampling in the camera/focal length combination. If you are very oversampled then there might not be much detail at all in the finer scales, so level 1 (and fine to some extent) will just sharpen the noise rather than any part of the image. In my setup, I find that I rarely use level 4, with almost everything being done by levels 1,2 and 3.

The 'Fine' implementation hasn't changed for some time, but a while back I did increase the maximum possible value of the slider from 2 to 3 based on testing/feedback. That means that if you move it a certain number of pixels right in the newer version you will get a higher slider value (say 0.3 rather than 0.2) than you would for moving it to the same position in the older versions where the maximum was 2. If you use the up/down buttons on the right of the number that make small adjustments to the value, you will be able to get a particular value pretty much exactly, and the amount of sharpening that a particular value generates has not changed. It's worth noting that good results seem to either come from a small amount of 'fine' (less than 0.1) and use of the normal sliders, *or* a fairly large 'fine' value and minimal use of the main level sliders - using both tends to oversharpen.

I will have to look into the file naming - as with deep sky stacking, it's not as simple as you might like as there are special rules in place to try to help organise the files. It's one of those situations where trying to make a 'quick' change to the code will probably break things.

cheers,

Robin