Every so often I come across a piece of image processing software that I find meets its aims very well. Such a program is the freeware/donationware AstroPicsLab from Italy.
David Regordosa the developer of AstroPicsLab combines the two disciplines, of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Astronomy.
AstroPics Lab is an AI-powered tool designed to enhance amateur astrophotography.
AstroPics Lab (AL) aims to make it easy anyone who starts in the field of astrophotography to do some image processing.
AstroPics Lab doesn't claim or want to compete with the fantastic tools that already exist, it simply aims to make the work easier for those amateurs who do not have the time and money to process astronomical images with current tools.
The project is called (AL) (AstroPics Lab) in honor of the late physicist and meteorologist Albert Borras, director of the Pujalt Observatory for 16 years, co-founder of Astroanoia and Anoiameteo and science communicator.
AStroPicsLab can:
Remove noise, enhance objects, remove/reduce stars, apply colour automatically, upscale 2x image, intelligent crop, autostretch, luminance layers, change palette, modify colours, 3d effects, enhance stars, etc.
One of the key functionalities is a neural network trained on over 35000 images to remove a wide range of noise types (Gaussian, thermal, cosmic rays, salt‑and‑pepper, etc.) by processing 256 × 256-pixel blocks and reconstructing a clean, detailed result.
The image is divided into small blocks, on which the AI model is applied to reduce noise. Finally, the blocks are put back together to create a final image without noise.
Also a Star Removal Model – Allows users to reduce or remove stars in images.
We shall illustrate the program by processing a high quality JPG image of the Iris nebula captured and stacked in a Seestar S50. It can also work on 16 bit files, PNG, FITS and TIFF. We are using the high quality JPG in this instance as this fits with the philosophy of the software and could make things easier for some Seestar users who don't want to go into stacking subframes in other software. Of course the program is equally well suited to working with stacked images from other imaging systems.
Click on an image to get a closer view
AstroPicsLab has a variety of functions and processes which can be seen in this short animation.
Alternatively there is a completely automatic processing mode where the user can decide what will be included in the automatic workflow.
Any of the images can be saved.
The final result can be saved and if required, x2 upscaled before saving.
