User manual MEADE AUTOSTAR IMAGE PROCESSING ADDENDUM

[. . . ] Meade Autostar Image Processing For Windows Version 3. 12 9 January 2004 This document and the Meade Autostar IP software described herein, are copyrighted and are protected from reproduction, proliferation, and disclosure under the Copyright laws of the United States of America. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Meade Instruments Corporation. The software and/or databases described in this document are furnished under a license agreement or nondisclosure agreement. The software and/or databases may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of the agreement. [. . . ] The pixel value may be displayed in three different formats: the 8 bit integer display value, the scaled floating point value or the 16 bit unprocessed value. The 16 bit format is only available for 12 or 16 bit images when the 16 bit data is resident. The mode can be chosen by selecting either the Integer, Real, or Unprocessed button located at the bottom of the dialog box. See the Image Prescale function for details on keeping the 16 bit data resident. The coordinate dialog box must be active if you wish to make distance measurements from the image. function has been selected from the Image Utilities dialog box. Histogram Displays a bar graph of the number of pixels in each of the 256 colors or shades of gray. The graph is automatically scaled, and displayed in a logarithmic format. The Max field at the top of the display indicates the maximum number of pixels contained in any of the colors. The lower group of 10 lines indicate the values from 1 to 10, the next group indicate the range from 10 to 100, the next group is 100 to 1000, and so on. The histogram is automatically updated whenever the image values have been modified. Magnifier The Magnifier allows you to zoom into any portion of the display to observe small details. If an image is displayed when the magnifier is turned on, the default starting location is the center of the image, otherwise it uses the center of the client area of the main window. A new area can be selected by moving the cursor onto the magnifier's window, depressing the left mouse button, then, while still holding the left button, move to the desired area. The magnification factor can be changed by moving the scroll bar located on the right side of the magnifier window. The size and location of the magnifier window can be modified using the standard methods. -19- Autostar IP Information Displays general data about the current image, such as, size, scale factors, date of image, location, etc. . Most of this data is a permanent part of the image and can be found in the headers of the various formats. The FITS and TIFF formats save all of the information. The Scale Factor and Zero Offset fields contain the factors used to convert the image from the orignal data to an 8 bit image. The View FITS Header option allows you to determine the information file contained within a FITS image. Also displayed is the image's histogram. -20- Autostar IP 6. Process The Processing section allows you to modify the actual image a number of ways using advanced image processing commands. Since the commands change the actual image data, this menu section features an UNDO command that will allow you to restore the image data to the its state prior to the previous command. To access the Process commands you can either click on Process on the Menu Bar with the mouse, use the Alt key and the appropriate underlined letter from the keyboard, or, when available, click on the appropriate button from the Tool Bar. Many of the image processing functions also allow for a preview so that you have the option to choose a different variation of the function , choose OK, or to Cancel the function. [. . . ] To improve you capability of viewing the high resolution B/W images, Epoch 2000 re-programs the hardware registers on the VGA board to display 16 gray values instead of 16 'pure' colors. By selecting the standard 16 color palette in the Image, Palette menu when the Grayscale Palette is active, you will be able to view the images in 16 shades of gray NOTE: The Grayscale Palette function removes all colors from the display leaving only shades of gray. Make sure you restore the regular colors by selecting the Standard Palette before you run other color intensive applications. -38- Autostar IP Appendix 39 Appendix A Image Processing Basics Image processing allows you to modify the appearance of an image by applying various types of filters, scaling options or transformations. With linear scaling, one pixel from the source image is multiplied by a scale factor, then an offset term is added. [. . . ]