Better Stitching with PixInsight's Photometric Mosaic Script [TAIC Short]

Our own Tim Hutchison demonstrates how to do a better job of stitching your mosaic panels together in PixInsight with the Photometric Mosaic script.
This TAIC Short is taken from a longer episode. You can watch the full episode here (June 5, 2022): • 2022-06-05 | TAIC 8th ...
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We’re a group of avid astrophotographers who meet online every week to discuss all aspects of astro imaging. From equipment to specialized scripts and everything in between, we connect you with others who are striving to capture and process better images.
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#astrophotography #pixinsight #mosaic

[@danielshade710]

Doesn’t work on older MacBooks with 16GB ram or less!!!😮 took a lot of reading to figure that out……wait I got it to work!!!! Spline error may require more pixels trimmed off in TrIm Mozaic

[@rheuer22]

I keep getting the message "invalid arguments" whenever I click run on PhotometricMosaic. Any help?

[@Aerostar509]

Well I just created my first mosaic using this video. It was a 4 panel image centered around Antares. I had to join the top 2 panels, then the bottom 2 panels and lastly the top 2 and bottom 2 for the final image.

[@allenbaylus3378]

for whatever reason I lost my go-to Scripts for Mosaic -
Scripts - Image Analysis - Image Plate Solver
Scripts Mosiac MosiacbyCoordinates
I had these when I had the trial but now that I have a paid version 1.8.9-1 build 1556 these are no longer present.
Which version are you running - and do you haver any idea how I can get these scripts again?
I know that the question is a little off topic but I can not even get past the first step and have the Image Plate Solver run before trying TAIC.
Thanks...

[@stevehiebert]

I have fought with Gradient Merge Mosaic for a long time trying to create a 6 panel mosaic, every result always ended with pinched stars at some point, it was very frustrating and also extremely time consuming. Using Photometric Mosaic was flawless and super fast... thanks for this.

[@joekritz8227]

This doesn’t seem to work with a solar mosaic as I can’t plate Solve with no stars. How would I stitch two solar images together to create a high resolution Solar Image?

[@astro-optics]

N.i.n.a Framing Assistent

[@komr323]

thank you sir

[@theheavensdeclareastro]

Awesome tutorial, thank you for sharing! I'm working on a large mosaic of the Soul Nebula and I've struggled with artifacts Gradient Merge Mosaic produces (spotlighting) as well as normalizing all of the brightness of the panels. This has helped significantly--PMM for the win!

[@paulwilson8367]

I had a 4 panel mosaic and I hadn't tried one previously. It caused me great difficulties, ha. I first tried using the Star Alignment plus DNA Linear Fit plus Gradient Merge Mosaic. That failed. Then I used Image Solver + Mosaic By Coordinates + Gradient Merge Mosaic. This worked, but though I liked the image, unfortunately all of the panel joins were visible and there were star artifacts right in the center of the image.
When I first looked at Photometric Mosaic and read the Quick Start, I found it not easy to interpret and when I just tried it, it made an image including about 1 and 1/4 of my 4 panels.
So I found this video, and voila, it worked! No seam lines and no star artifacts. Very pleased!
I use a RASA 8, so with the camera up on the front end inside the dew shield, getting a precise camera angle is really difficult, I usually just try to get 0 degrees or 180 degrees. Even then, it's not perfect. Point being, the panels are not ever going to exactly fit together.

[@elbass0]

Excellent video. Given that it's fairly low-res, it would be great if you could upload a high-res version. That'll make it easier to see what settings you're using.

[@garyreynolds1558]

Liked the video as I'm trying, without much luck, to make a four Pane mosaic. I'm only about 2 months into Pixinsight so that might be why things are not working. I image solved the four panes ok. Then I had two major issues.
1. I added the four solved images to mosaic by coordinates and it said it ran successfully however it did not create any new on screen images. It did create one new image in the output folder. I changed the image file order and just kept running it over and over until I had the 4 registered images.This didn't seem right!
2. I next tried to combine these images in Photometeric Mosaic. Pane 1and 2 combined ok Then 1+2 and 3 combined ok.. Pane 4 would not combine Error message says "The images have to be the same dimensions". Don't know what that means. They were all taken with the same camera and telescope.
I did notice the default image scale in Photometeric Mosaic is off by 20-30%. If I correct it it just brings up more error messages.
Really confused, Gary

[@AstroDragon33]

WOW. I ran my first ever mosic, a simple 2x panel of Rho with this method, and eventhough my images were far different, far off center, had large gradients, zero processing whatsoever pulled from the basic ASI studio stacker, it made a flawless joint and mosaic! Holy moly, thank you! And well done to the creators!

[@MarvelousLXVII]

Thank you! Much better than Gradient Merge Mosaic.

[@migster3025]

This tutorial yielded perfect results for my first 2x2 mosaic. I wasn't looking for the "easy way" but the "proper way" and this looks like it. Thanks.

[@Sidecontrol1234]

This is excellent , I used this on a 2 panel of the North America nebula and Pelican nebula, no star pinching, which was great.

[@matthewbrown5208]

Great tutorial. These are the best results I've had so far. Thankyou so much

[@Jason-qt8bm]

Excellent presentation, thanks for taking the time to produce this!

[@trevorgreen2232]

Thank you for sharing ....looks like a great tool and I look forward to trying it soon

[@aax_1980]

Very well explained. 👍