Pixelmator Pro 2 for Astrophotography?

Talk about Pixelmator Pro, share tips & tricks, tutorials, and other resources.
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2020-11-20 08:31:03

I’m just beginning to explore astrophotography and have been investigating software for working with the resultant photos.
What I want is software that can take advantage of modern Mac hardware. Specifically, the Apple Silicon Mac Mini that I just got yesterday. I also need software that can use the output from my iPhone 8 as I can’t afford all the dedicated astrophotography equipment that’s out there. I need to use what I have ;-)

From all of my explorations, I have found that, for planetary photography, there are a few essentials:
-Hundreds, if not thousands of RAW photos need to be taken at a time
-those photo’s need to be aligned together (overlapped as perfectly as possible)
-Then “stacked” and processed for noise and atmospheric reduction (AutoStakkert & Starry Sky Stacker)

There are some programs out there, such as Pixelmator, that have ML algorithms, for denoising but that won’t take care of the atmospheric interference, or will it?

I really like that Pixelmator can fully utilize my new Mac! I’ve been an amateur Pixelmator user for years :-)

How might I be able to use Pixelmator Pro 2 to do this?
Is there any way to align and clean out the noise and atmospheric distortions of a stack of a thousand images?

I was thinking maybe using the ML Denoise on each image individually then putting them into the “stacking” programs.

What do you think?
I would love to know!
Perhaps there are a few feature requests embedded in my questions!
Thanks in advance!

Jason
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2020-11-26 15:18:06

Hey Jason, I'd say the main requests for you are photo stacking/merging, which is something we're aware of but aren't planning to add at least in the near future. In the longer-term future – it's possible.

We have an Automator action for denoising images using ML Denoise, so you can use that to process a large number of images (or AppleScript if you need more functionality).
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2020-11-26 17:06:43

Thanks for the reply!
I look forward to getting a closer look at those Applescript actions and ML functions!

Jason