Suggestions and comments on AA6

[Forum_2017]

Hi Fabio,

thank you for AA, I have been using it for a little while now and have found it effective. I do have some usability feedback if you are interested.

The file/save image command should remember the last folder saved in. It always assumes the folder set in the preferences which is usually not where I am working. Because I keep images and working areas in different places for each object, it becomes tiresome to keep moving back to where I want to be using the saveas dialog.

Coregister should be more helpful. I had problems using this to align two images, one taken in Ha and the other in a colour filter such as blue (I tried others too). I can select a number of stars to align on but most of the time AA just says the equivalent of "I can't do it". It would be nice if there was some explanation of why it failed and how to fix it. As it stands, it is purely luck if it works.

The preprocessing dialog is very awkward to use when selecting files. It would be much improved if the file selection method was based a tree view such as in windows explorer which shows all folders available, not just the path to the one selected. This makes it easier to move around separate folders for LRGB or date taken or whatever the folder structure is. At the moment, I can open a folder with files taken on a particular date (that's just my organisation, other people will have different arrangements). Once AA detects images, all other folders at the same level disappear so that I am forced to dbl click on the parent to show them again. Although the dialog obviously works, it could be a lot faster and slicker to use. It would also save time and fingers if folders could be opened with a single click rather than double. Another small thing is that when I want to select a folder at the edge of the folder window, the first click causes the window to scroll up one line so that the 2nd click of the double click hits empty space or another folder.

When I select the options tab and then auto-alignment, it never remembers the alignment options I had last time so I have to reset them again.

Add tutorials. AA has a user interface similar to a lot of powerful programs in that it presents a lot of buttons but gives you no idea in which order to press them or why you would want to. It would be nice if the help system or the AA website could give tutorals for typical workflows and how-to solve various imaging problems.

Better help text - much of the help text is somewhat sparse, eg the text for convolution basically says obvious things such as "the rotate buttons rotates the matrix" but does not say why you would want to or what problem that solves.

Add a config option to set the default way that images are displayed, ie maximised or windowed.

On some images, star selection in coregistration works in ha but fails in blue or some other filter. No reason given.

The escape key doesn't always cancel a dialog, eg preprocessing.

AA keeps a handle open to a file even after it has been closed - this stops you deleting it until AA is closed.

Trichromy should auto-align better so that I don't need to do coregistration or manual alignment.

Despite all that, I still enjoy using AA!

regards, Richard

[Forum_2017]

Good suggestions.
Don't know if it has changed in AA6 (still use AA5) but it's annoying that when doing processing AA completely steals focus so it's difficult to do something else when there's a long list of processed files.

[Forum_2017]

Hello, thanks for all the suggestions.

Maybe I can address some of them now:

Coregister: This is a rare command, maybe you mean the command "Align" ? To align two images with different size, disable the option "Automatic setting" and increase the option "Scale max." . Feel free to send me two images with give you trouble.

Files in preprocessing: In same cases it's useful to drag the entire folder (this will add all files in the folder), this is why the single click just selects the folder instead of opening it. It's possible to do the same thing also from other file browsers (see attach).

Opened files and handles: That would be a serious bug, please report where/when this happens.

Trichromy align: For the moment consider the command "Align all" before launching Trichromy.

I'm taking note of all the rest, thanks.

[Forum_2017]

Hi,

thanks for the quick reply.

I didn't realise (and the help docs don't say) that you can drag files from windows explorer - that's a great feature that should be publicised!

Just a few more questions if you don't mind:

* what is the difference between coregister and align? why would I choose one over the other?
* when you stack images, sometimes it doesn't like some image or other but it just says "ERROR!". It would be nice it AA said what was actually wrong and how I can fix it. At the moment, I am left in the dark guessing.
* handles - this problem has gone away in AA6/SP1 - thanks!

regards,
Richard

[Forum_2017]

I haven't really noticed that happening in AA6 so perhaps it has better multithreading/multuprocessor support? If you have a multiprocessor machine, you could set processor affinity for AA5 to one or more CPU cores which will leave the remaining cores for other tasks. You can also change AA5's priority so that it releases focus sooner:

start Taskmanager (right click on the menu bar)

Taskmanager->details tab-> right click on the AA5 entry-> set affinity and/or set priority.

[Forum_2017]

@richardejm:
"Align" is the standard command to stack images, it's fully automatic, with several algorithms. "Coregister" is a slow procedure, you will have to select by hand three reference points of both images, actually it's useful for non-astronomical images.

@einari:
Preprocessing requires a lot of resources, to be able to stack and sum quicky hundreds of image, so we choose to making it a blocking command. If you need to stack 100 or 1000+ images and you need to perform some other processing in the meanwhile, you may execute another Astroart instance.

[Forum_2017]

Don't know if there's a misconception (in either side) but if I let AA to stack say 100 images and want to do say some internet browsing in the mean time it wont work because AA steals window focus when it does processing.

[Forum_2017]

OK, but this is another issue.
Until now the Preprocessing Progress Window is always in foreground on the Windows Desktop, even when the processing is progressing without errors. Probably this is too much, and it's better to popup only when signaling important events. I'm testing this solution for the SP2, if you like contact me to receive the prerelease of it.
Meanwhile, the only solution is to move the windows to the side of the monitor before starting the Preprocessing.
Thanks,
Fabio.