Notice: This is just a rough guide to give you an idea of how to operate the software.
I might have made some mistakes, also some crucial steps might be missing...
Serious noise in areas of low signal are to be removed. This is best be done with SGBNR feature in PixIS. Yet all areas that have already been
processed for sharpness and clarity we are satisfied with are to be preserved. This can only be achieved by creating a mask,
that tells the routine where to apply the filter entirely and which areas are to be spared.
To create the mask we extract the colors as we only need luminance data for that mask. Take a close look onto the pop-up window that
tells you which boxes to check and uncheck.
Image01 will stay the original file for all our processing.
The resulting image is going to become the mask we need. We have to invert it by hitting "ctrl-I"
As we want the black areas in the image to be information for the SGBNR routine where NOT to process the image with the filter.
White areas will allow the filter to operate the data at 100%, while black areas hide the filter-effect totally. The masks therefore functions
like a filter that lets the process of filtering penetrate only according to the allocation provided by this mask.
To determine which parts of the image shall and shall not be processed, we open the histogram in order to modify the mask.
Therefore 3 sliders show up on the bottom of the curve-window.
The 3 sliders
To see the effect of moving the sliders we can create a real-time preview by checking this icon (see below)
An additional window pops up and now we adjust the curves by moving the 3 sliders to the right as shown above.
Once the resulting 'preview window' meets our desires we can activate the curves by means of "drag and drop" the application into the mask we created.
We now highlight the original file (Image01) and have to activate the mask by hitting "ctrl-M".
Once the mask is activated we hide it by unchecking the line "mask" (see top left)
as it would make further processing and evaluation difficult.
The mask is hidden and yet active.
We open SGBNR controll box and also drag a "preview" window to apply the filters only to this specific region of interest
while figuring out which parameters will be best for our purpose.
Make sure to only use CIE L/ab in the first place - These parameters could be useful.
Reduce threshold to very low value.
To test the parameters we have chosen "drag and drop" the icon that is marked with the red circle into the preview window.
By clicking the marked icon we can move backward and foreward to evaluate our processing-result and eventually modify the parameters.
Once we are satisfied with the filtering we highlight the original full frame file and "drag and drop" the icon into the image.
The final result is very satisfying, as it preserves the fine details, stars and all sharpened areas yet having processed the background noise perfectly.
You can certainly repeat this methode with different parameters in a couple of sequences.
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My gratitude goes to Rocky Hess, who has perfectly helped me comprehend this software.
Found any mistakes - any comments ? Please contact me.