PixInsight 1.8.5 was released today, bringing with it a number of good updates to the platform. Everyone who owns a commercial licence for it will have received an e-mail notifying of the release. As always, you will have to uninstall your current version, download the new version from the website and install it separately (you cannot update to version 1.8.5 via the auto-update system).
Aside from the nice touch to the workspace background, PixInsight 1.8.5 has supposedly improved performance and stability across the board. Moreover, it introduces two whole new processes: The first of these processes, PhotometricColorCalibration, plate solves your colour image to determine an appropriate, true white reference for colour calibration based on a selection by the user, such as a spiral galaxy, elliptical galaxy or a G2V type star.
The second of these processes, LocalNormalization, can be used in conjunction with ImageIntegration when stacking your calibrated and registered frames. This tends to produce better-looking resulting images with less background noise and a stronger signal on relevant objects, with smoother transitions.
These processes are certainly well-worth the time to use and will be shortly documented in relevant tutorials here. ImageIntegration also sees a relevant update that adds a new option called Large-Scale Pixel Rejection. Enabling this improves the robustness of ImageIntegration in rejecting structures that are determined to be large-scale. In other words, if normal pixel rejection does not successfully remove satellite or aircraft trails in your fully stacked image, this new option will make for a more successful clean-up.
All in all, a worthy update to PixInsight that merits updating if you have not done so already!
The second of these processes, LocalNormalization, can be used in conjunction with ImageIntegration when stacking your calibrated and registered frames. This tends to produce better-looking resulting images with less background noise and a stronger signal on relevant objects, with smoother transitions.
These processes are certainly well-worth the time to use and will be shortly documented in relevant tutorials here. ImageIntegration also sees a relevant update that adds a new option called Large-Scale Pixel Rejection. Enabling this improves the robustness of ImageIntegration in rejecting structures that are determined to be large-scale. In other words, if normal pixel rejection does not successfully remove satellite or aircraft trails in your fully stacked image, this new option will make for a more successful clean-up.
All in all, a worthy update to PixInsight that merits updating if you have not done so already!