StarTools 1.9 preview

[alacant]

SVDecon.
Nice to be able to get right into the centre of a globular.
Great job. Thanks.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lutpgZ ... share_link

[Mike in Rancho]

SVDecon.
Nice to be able to get right into the centre of a globular.
Great job. Thanks.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lutpgZ ... share_link

While the white outlining has become even more advanced, I'm not sure I would sample deep in a glob. Or even anywhere within a glob proper. I think potential samples thrown up by the SVD mask still might need sanity checking, for close doubles, nebulosity, or other non-star signal.

The PSF is what we're trying to get at, and golly it's tight in there with stars and probably overlapping PSFs.

[Mike in Rancho]

I believe, starting with maybe 544, largeui and highdpi are doing the same thing - that being the largeui, rather than the happy and pleasant middle ground of highdpi.

[Mike in Rancho]

I can't remember if this one has been mentioned before - I didn't find it on a search - but did some testing last night to try to figure it out a little more.

In all the 1.9's, once you have gone only a step or two past Open or Compose, if you try to start over with an Open (say, OSC file), the ol' "center option" not-white-balanced OSC/DSLR is not available. You can only pick linear or non-linear, which of course with some data can lead to just a big green wall for the first OptiDev and not your desired Compose-mode grayscale.

You have to close ST and start the program again, and then all the options are available as normal.

I can't recall if there is a similar menu hiccup with Compose. I was only playing with OSC files last night, but I can do more testing with mono files to see what the behavior is. I thought there was something peculiar, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

I did find a work-around, if you need center-option OSC but don't feel like closing and restarting ST: There is a new Help button as the far-right option. If you click that, [read the help if you want], and then close the Help, all options then return and you can use not-white-balanced OSC/DSLR.

[admin]

I can't remember if this one has been mentioned before - I didn't find it on a search - but did some testing last night to try to figure it out a little more.

In all the 1.9's, once you have gone only a step or two past Open or Compose, if you try to start over with an Open (say, OSC file), the ol' "center option" not-white-balanced OSC/DSLR is not available. You can only pick linear or non-linear, which of course with some data can lead to just a big green wall for the first OptiDev and not your desired Compose-mode grayscale.

You have to close ST and start the program again, and then all the options are available as normal.

I can't recall if there is a similar menu hiccup with Compose. I was only playing with OSC files last night, but I can do more testing with mono files to see what the behavior is. I thought there was something peculiar, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

I did find a work-around, if you need center-option OSC but don't feel like closing and restarting ST: There is a new Help button as the far-right option. If you click that, [read the help if you want], and then close the Help, all options then return and you can use not-white-balanced OSC/DSLR.

Thank you for reporting this. This is now fixed in the next release.

As for the highdpi vs largeui, there should definitely is a difference, but much depends on the screen realestate whether that difference is observable.

highdpi makes everything bigger to a certain extent (that extent being a doubling of the normal size), but not bigger than what is needed to display things in high DPI (e.g. a higher resolution that the high DPI requires). A second constraint is, that if this is too big, the size is reduced to what still fits.
largeui simply maxes out the size to whatever still fits. On many screens the result may appear exactly the same.

To give you an idea, the constraint for "max size" is about 18 buttons high.

[Mike in Rancho]

Thanks Ivo. Something still changed though with the 9.54x, maybe to get ready for 8K screens?

On my "4K" really UHD, I get these results changing the config file. Base, High DPI, and Large UI left to right (from screenshots with ST fully enlarged).

9.536:

ST 536 UI scaling.jpg (93.25 KiB) Viewed 13298 times

9.546:

ST 546 UI scaling.jpg (104.27 KiB) Viewed 13298 times

Which, the now slightly bigger base size for 546 isn't too bad, whereas the 536 base is tiny. The giant buttons take up too much real estate though. So I might just leave the config at base for when I try out .54x and the newer releases.

[admin]

Thanks Ivo. Something still changed though with the 9.54x, maybe to get ready for 8K screens?

On my "4K" really UHD, I get these results changing the config file. Base, High DPI, and Large UI left to right (from screenshots with ST fully enlarged).

9.536:

ST 536 UI scaling.jpg


9.546:

ST 546 UI scaling.jpg


Which, the now slightly bigger base size for 546 isn't too bad, whereas the 536 base is tiny. The giant buttons take up too much real estate though. So I might just leave the config at base for when I try out .54x and the newer releases.

Hi Mike,

Finally had some time to look at this, but on my 4K Windows machine (a laptop) .546 is behaving as it should;

Screenshot-0.jpg (295.74 KiB) Viewed 13178 times

Screenshot-1.jpg (286.45 KiB) Viewed 13178 times

Is there some Windows DPI setting that is different?
All that requires change for the executable under Properties (under Change high DPI settings), is the High DPI scaling override; the checkbox should be checked and the dropdown item should say "Application"...

[admin]

1.9.547 alpha 9 is now available in the download section.

• Picking last enumerated GPU in case of multi-GPU setup
• Fixed memory corruption in core function in GPU-accelerated version
• Fixed bug where Linear question popup would show incorrect choices
• Added more early abort conditions to SVDecon to increase responsiveness when setting new samples
• Improved de-ringing of very bright stars in SVDecon

[Mike in Rancho]

Is there some Windows DPI setting that is different?
All that requires change for the executable under Properties (under Change high DPI settings), is the High DPI scaling override; the checkbox should be checked and the dropdown item should say "Application"...

Well, that's embarrassing.

I haven't tried yet but am confident you have it right. The releases have been fast and furious and I never went to change the DPI settings in Properties, except for the revision that was live when I got the 4K monitor. Sigh.

1.9.547 alpha 9 is now available in the download section.

• Picking last enumerated GPU in case of multi-GPU setup
• Fixed memory corruption in core function in GPU-accelerated version
• Fixed bug where Linear question popup would show incorrect choices
• Added more early abort conditions to SVDecon to increase responsiveness when setting new samples
• Improved de-ringing of very bright stars in SVDecon

Looking forward to checking that out. 536 with my preferred deringing has been falling behind of all the other improvements.

[happy-kat]

Thank you for the updated version Ivo, though the download page is pulling 1.9.546 still