Registax Heir

 A critical part of the planetary computer assisted video imaging (CAVI) - aka "lucky imaging" - is the sharpening of the stacked and aligned image with wavelets. It can seem like a black art as you push and pull levers to apply various wavelet changes to the image to make it clearer. There is also a huge amount of art here, where one balances between a heavily processed and artificial looking output vs. one that has left details on the table that should be brought out.

Registax has been the de facto freeware for the application of wavelet sharpening for quite some time. However, the last release was in 2010 - a virtual lifetime when it comes to a software product. As a result there have been alternatives emerging that the amateur imager may want to evaluate.

One of the new kids is waveSharp, and part of the attraction is that this is an open source project by Cor Berrevoets, one of the primary forces in the development of Registax. As stated in his announcement on CloudyNights of the availability of waveSharp at the end of last January,  

(Registax) was developed in 2011 only for windows 32bit computers, waveSharp is developed for 64bit computers and multiple operating systems (WIN64, LINUX, MACOS). Therefore this application is only meant to sharpen/enhance images that have been created using other software (alignment/stacking).

You can download the compiled executable for placement on your computer at the project's GitHub repository.

The interface is pretty clean, allowing you to open your image and then use sliders to apply the strength of your wavelets. Unlike Registax we have only 3 sliders, with the first one affecting the small-level detail, the third increasing the contrast on larger scale features. The "Denoise" (smoothing) sliders are not activated by default but must have their checkbox selected. 

The user also can select one of three filters to apply. Gaussian appears to be very similar to Registax, with the changes slow and gradual to create a sharpened image. ZeroGauss is quite strong, with minor adjustments having significant effects. The third choice, Bilateral, is supposed to help avoid the "rind" effect that we often see in planets like Venus and Mars with bright limbs. 

I've been using waveSharp for about two months now and have been very impressed with it. The changes are applied quickly (possibly a reflection of its 64-bit architecture) and the various filters are a nice touch. You can also save your settings and recall them for application to new images. The one thing that is probably not as easy as Registax is correcting RGB alignment (atmospheric distortion) to your image - it appears to be more automated in Registax. 

Change is inevitable but not always positive. While waveSharp is still in its early development it seems to be a suitable heir to the venerable Registax - give it a try!