Registax tutorial

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Dave Lillis
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Registax tutorial

Post by Dave Lillis » Tue Jun 09, 2015 11:16 pm

Hi,
Put on the kettle, set aside an hour or so to do this, but if you complete it, then you'll be more then able to process your own avi's and bmps.This was done for registax 4 and 5, Version6 is a little different, but the principle is the same.

Making images of planets and the moon has been revolutionised over the past few year by a software program call registax, its free and downloaded from
http://www.astronomie.be/registax/

You make an AVI (video) or a set of BMPs (still pictures) of the planet/moon using typically a webcam (e.g. Philips Toucam Pro) and a telescope and put them through this program where it stacks them to create a single high resolution image. Typically people use between 100-2000+ frames in the AVI or single BMP images for stacking, the more the better.

I've tried to make up a step by step procedure for you on what to do with registax with a typical set of planetary and lunar BMPs or AVI, it might look abit long and daunting at first, but after a bit of practice, you'll be able to run through this without even thinking about it as the program is very intuitive and easy to follow. This program likes a fast computer and as much memory as possible, if it runs very slowly on your machine, you might need more memory.
It's best to run through these steps with registax open next to it on the screen.


1, Load up the AVI/bmps into registax.
2, Click "LRGB" if your images are in colour
3, Move the bottom horizontal tool bar (left-right) to move through the frame sequence to go through all the frames to find a relatively clear one, the best if possible.
4, Click on an obvious and roughly central point in the image, be it the planet itself or a good crater on the moon. If the centring box goes off screen, registax will discard those frames, make sure you select an alignment box size that suits the image, for toucams 128 works well
5, Click align, let it run, it might take along time.
6, When align is finished, you'll be able to see that say 300 frames are within 95%, and 1000 frames are 80, these are just my figures for a particular AVI, your and everybody elses figures will be different, I always select 95% quality and then redo the entire process using 75% of the frames.
7, When its done, click on "Limit" and it'll go to the next page.

8, Create a referance frame of 50 by pressing the "create" button.
9, When this is finished, you'll see a bunch of levels slide bars on the left, 1 to 6. If you depress the "1.0" on the upper right of each slide, you'll see the kind of detail that the slider will enhance, you'll see 1 will enhance alot of finer detail+noise and 6 will enhance bigger blobs.
10, Tick the "automatic" processing tick.
11, Tick the "wavelet filter" to default (left) and "step increment" to 1
12, Move the slide bars until to enhance real detail, be careful not to go too far.
13, Press the gamma button and set its value from 1.0 to 0.8, type the value, don't manipulate the line manually.
14, Press the "Do All" button, top left.
15, If the image looks bad/destroyed/over-processed, press the "Reset" button and go back to step eleven (warning, if 'reset", the "step incrementer" automatically goes to 0, make sure you put it back to 1)
16, when you're happy, press "Continue"

17, Press "optimize and stack"
18, After between anything between 1 and 30 minutes, it'll finish eventually, go make some tea and have some biscuits. :)
19, Press gamma and set to 1.0 and press the "reset" button.
20, Press of the "RGB Balance" button and press "auto balance", if the resultant image looks wrong, reset the RGB, press another part of the image and do again, if you cant get a good result, then skip this step.
21, Make sure "automatic" processing is selected

22, Now the fun begins :P
Experiment with the "default" and "gaussian" wavelet settings and different strengths for the 6 sliders. If the image goes AWOL at any time, then press the "reset" button (remember the warning in step 15!), experiment with different gammas/brightness/contrasts if you want.
Make sure you press the "Do All" button before you go onto the next step, if the image goes AWOL, press the "reset" and redo your levels (again remembering the warning in step 15!).

23, Then click on the "final" tab, change the hue and saturation to add more colour if you want and save the image.

I often then go back to the wavelets setting (step 22) do a "reset" and retry with different levels , this way you end up with a number of different versions of the same image, and pick the best of the bunch as the nights image. this is a good idea as you might think you have a good image only to come back to it later and see it with fresh eyes and discover it's not quite the image you thought it was.

Any questions, just ask.
Last edited by Dave Lillis on Fri Jul 03, 2015 10:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Dave L. on facebook, See my images in flickr
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Gordon Lalor
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Re: Registax tutorial

Post by Gordon Lalor » Wed Jun 10, 2015 12:00 am

Thanks Dave,
I forgot to take notes at your talk last week :oops:

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Dave Lillis
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Re: Registax tutorial

Post by Dave Lillis » Wed Jun 10, 2015 12:27 pm

:lol: well, now you can use this Instead.
I hope to see lots of processed images guys ;) .
I originally had this up on the ifas boards nearly 9 years ago, I think it's better to have it here, it took me an age to find it there..
Last edited by Dave Lillis on Fri Jul 03, 2015 11:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Dave L. on facebook, See my images in flickr
Carrying around my 20" obsession is going to kill me, but what a way to go. :)

Conn Buckley
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Re: Registax tutorial

Post by Conn Buckley » Wed Jun 10, 2015 7:46 pm

Dave, Thanks very much for taking the trouble post this. I made a few AVI files of a young Moon in a bright sky a few weeks ago. I will give this a go and see how I get on.

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Dave Lillis
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Re: Registax tutorial

Post by Dave Lillis » Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:10 pm

Great stuff Conn
Any feedback, comments, suggestions you might have on these instruction would be great, you'll be using them with fresher eyes then me.
Dave L. on facebook, See my images in flickr
Carrying around my 20" obsession is going to kill me, but what a way to go. :)

Simon Kenny
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Re: Registax tutorial

Post by Simon Kenny » Thu Jun 11, 2015 10:19 pm

Thanks Dave - very much appreciated.

Conn Buckley
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Re: Registax tutorial

Post by Conn Buckley » Thu Jul 02, 2015 11:37 am

Dave, As promised here are a few results from using your Registax tutorial. I had some practice avi's of the Moon from 26th May taken in a bright sky between 21:16 and 22:48. They ranged in duration from 30" /602 frames to 46"/1399 frames. The first image here is from 21:16 and is noticeably different from the later ones.

I should say that I have tried earlier versions of Registax some years ago. For this attempt I tried Registax6 but it simply would not work. All of these images are with Registax 5 that worked really well.
In your talk you stressed how long the stacking process can take. I think you were using avi's of circa 2000 frames. In my trial the longest avi I had was 1399 frames. I found that the processing was done in 2/3 minutes max. …. either I am not doing something right or the desktop computer is fast at processing.

As regards results I would say that they are pleasing. I was more concerned with following the tutorial steps than spending ages with fine tuning the resultant images.

The avi's I worked with were more to get the computer/camera etc working again. There were a few things in your tutorial that I did not understand so I will do another run and make notes and get back to you.
I used a Philips ToUcam Pro II webcam with a Meade LX200R 10' scope and an old desktop computer. If any club member with a go to scope would like to try out this technique but don't want the expense of buying a camera then I would be happy to loan them my webcam. I have the the original software CD.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/16829187@ ... ed-public/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/16829187@ ... ed-public/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/16829187@ ... ted-public
https://www.flickr.com/photos/16829187@ ... ted-public
https://www.flickr.com/photos/16829187@ ... ed-public/

Frank Ryan
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Re: Registax tutorial

Post by Frank Ryan » Thu Jul 02, 2015 5:52 pm

Great shots Conn!

Gordon Lalor
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Re: Registax tutorial

Post by Gordon Lalor » Thu Jul 02, 2015 6:42 pm

Very nice Conn.

The mountain range in the second last pic really stands out.

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Dave Lillis
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Re: Registax tutorial

Post by Dave Lillis » Fri Jul 03, 2015 11:50 pm

Very nice Conn, a pity we didn't get a chance to finish our conversation last night on this, time got the better of us.
The 4th image of the appenine mountains is excellent. When you get a chance, can you say where the notes became confusing, I'd like to change whatever is needed to make them more comprehensible.

Also, if you get a chance to redo the images, experiment with either only using the 1 level at the end when sharpening, if it has no effect the use only level 2, I often find that the higher levels tend to cgi the image.
If you're seeing snow capped peaks, then you've pushed the levels too far.

As for speed, I wrote that many years ago, back when my old laptop could hardly add numbers, you're right that machines these days are much faster.
Dave L. on facebook, See my images in flickr
Carrying around my 20" obsession is going to kill me, but what a way to go. :)

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