PixInsight

Company: Pleiades Software

PixInsight - a modular, open-architecture image processing platform specialized in astrophotography.

The main PixInsight application includes a powerful graphical user interface and a high-performance processing infrastructure. Processes, image file formats, and the definitions of their associated user interfaces, are implemented as external modules.

PixInsight modules are built around the PixInsight Class Library (PCL). PCL is an ISO C++ software development kit including a comprehensive set of image processing algorithms and a high-level API that allows communication between modules and the main PixInsight application. PCL provides a large set of ready-to-use, advanced implementations, ranging from geometric image transforms to avant-garde multiscale analysis algorithms. PCL will be free and publicly available. Interested software developers can author cool image processing tools as PixInsight modules.

"Astronomical imaging involves highly demanding, extremely complex tasks requiring sophisticated image processing algorithms and implementations. Our interface is based on abstract resources that isolate the processes from the objects they act on (mainly images). To define the behavior of these resources and their interaction with the user, we need the help of a coherent, object-oriented model, along with a highly flexible and customizable application development framework. Qt's signal/slot paradigm is the ideal way to implement all of the complex relations between the elements of our user interface, helping us in writing truly type-safe and reusable components. Qt's portability and excellent native performance are crucial for us in writing the advanced image processing application that we want to achieve.

We started rewriting our application around Qt 3.3 during the first half of 2005. When Qt 4.0 was released in June, porting our existing GUI code to the new framework required some extra hard work, but it was well worth the effort. The new Arthur painting system is powerful and performing, which is very welcome in a heavily graphics-oriented application like PixInsight, and the Scribe text handling classes are much more versatile and easy to use. Finally, the new model/view components offer even more flexibility by isolating data from their visual representations. Qt 4 turns our day-to-day programming work into an exciting experience."

Juan Conejero, Pleiades Astrophoto Team

For further information visit the Pleiades Software homepage.