Figure 1: When you click on the install program for Calibration Groups, you'll see this dialog. Click OK to continue.

Figure 2: Click the Setup button at top right to start the installation routine.

Figure 3: Click OK to continue with setup.

Figure 4: Click the button at top left to begin the actual installation. If necessary, you can change the installation directory from the default. I recommend that you keep the default if that is possible.

Figure 5: The install program asks you to choose the program group. The default is "New Astronomy Press," and I recommend that you keep this as your choice.

Figure 6: When installation is complete, you'll see this dialog. Click OK to continue.

Figure 7: All software from New Astronomy Press is installed into the "New Astronomy Press" group on the Start | Programs menu. This shows two such examples.

Figure 8: When you start Calibration Groups for MaxIm DL 3, it also starts MaxIm DL 3.x. You must have MaxIm DL installed in order to use Calibration groups. This figure shows the Calibration Groups opening window, and the MaxIm DL window in the background. You must have at least version 3.07 of MaxIm DL to use CalGroups.

Figure 9: The first time you start Calibration Groups, it will not have any calibration groups, and the various folders will be set to C:\. 

Figure 10: The Calibration Groups for MaxIm DL 3 program. Calibration groups, and the buttons for creating and managing them, are at top left. Files to be calibrated are at top right. Information about options settings are at bottom left.

Note: The download version of this program is a 30-day trial version. If you need to register your copy, click the Register button at the top center of the window.

Figure 11: Clicking the Register button displays this dialog. Enter the username and password you received by email following purchase, and click OK to continue. NOTE: you must use upper and lower case and spaces EXACTLY as they appeared in the email!

Figure 12: If you enter the incorrect password, you will see this dialog. Click OK to close the program. If the 30-day trial period has not expired, you can restart the program and continue to use it for the remaining days in the trial period.

Figure 13: If the password you entered was correct, you'll see this dialog. Click OK to continue. You won't have to ever enter the password again unless you remove and reinstall the program.

Figure 14: The main Calibration Groups window. This is what it will look like the first time you start it up (after you have registered). The unregistered version is similar; it will just have the Register button at top center.

Figure 15: To begin, click on the File | Input Folder menu item.

Figure 16:  This opens a dialog box that allows you to select the folder that contains the images you want to process.  Navigate to the folder, and click Open.

Figure 17: The .FIT files in the folder are displayed at upper right. All .FIT files are selected by default. You can click files to select them. To select more than one file, use the SHIFT and CTRL keys as you would with any Windows folder: click and then hold down SHIFT to select a range of files; click and then hold down CTRL to add files to a selection one by one. 

Click the All or None buttons to select or deselect all files.  Select only those files you want to process. The path of the input folder appears in the main window, under the "Input folder" heading. If there are no .FIT files in this folder, the list of files will be empty.

Figure 18: To calibrate the selected files, you must first create a calibration group. Click the New Group button, or use the File | New Group menu item..

Figure 19: This displays the Add/Edit Calibration Groups dialog. The boxes at the top of the window define the characteristics for this group - name, temperature, bin mode, and exposure length. All but the "Group Name" box will be filled in automatically when you add dark frames to the group.

The software will use this information to build a filename. DO NOT use underscores in any of these boxes! The underscore is used in the file name that is built up, and if you use underscores it will confuse the software when you try to edit the group later!

Figure 20: To add dark frames to the group, click the Add Dark button..

Figure 21:A dialog opens that allows you to navigate to the folder with the dark frames. Click to select the dark frames you want to add. You can use the Shift and Control keys to add more than one file at time. Click Open when you have selected the appropriate files.

Note: The Add Bias and Add Flat buttons work the same way.

Figure 22: Three dark frames have been added to the file list next to the Add Dark button. If you make a mistake, click to highlight a file and then click the "Clear Selected' button under the Add Dark button to remove the selected files. To remove all darks, click the Clear Darks button.

Note: These buttons work in the same fashion in the Bias and Flat sections.

Figure 23: Some bias frames have been added in the same way.

There is a Scaling section above the lists of calibration files. Use this to set the default scaling options for this particular calibration group. These are the same settings you have available in MaxIm DL when setting up for calibration. See the MaxIm DL documentation if you aren't already familiar with these options. These settings are stored with the rest of the information about the calibration group, and are automatically restored when you choose a group. The most common setting is "Auto scale duration."

Note: Most of the time, you will want to use a Median Combine on calibration frames. Click the "Use Median Combine" checkbox to turn median combine on and off. The recommended setting is to check this option.

Note: The "Set calibration on save" button is also normally one you want to leave checked. When this is checked, CalGroups will pass the calibration frames to MaxIm DL on a save, and MaxIm will combine them and create master frames. Later, when you use the group, MaxIm DL will use the master frames for much faster processing.

Figure 24: Continue adding bias, dark, and flat-field frames to the group until you are done. Then click the Save button at upper left to save the calibration group. If you don't want to save the group, click the Cancel button instead.

Figure 25: It can take a long time for MaxIm DL to set the calibration frames. During this operation, you see this obvious warning to let you know what's going on. The larger your CCD chip, and the more images you use for calibration (and it's always best to use a lot of them!), the longer this step will take. The good news is that with CalGroups this is a one-time step. The next time you use the group for calibration, the master frames will be used instead of the large number of calibration frames.

Figure 26: If you save the group, it appears in the list of calibration groups at the top left of the main window. You can quickly and easily re-use the group at any time - just click on a group to make it the active group. To edit a group, you can double-click it, or click on the Properties button.

Figure 27: To select the output folder where the calibrated images will be placed, click the "File | Output folder for calibration" menu item.

Figure 28: This opens the dialog shown here. Navigate to the output folder for calibrated images. I recommend creating a sub-folder of the input folder for your calibrated images. Click the Open button.

Figure 29: The path of the output folder appears in the main window, under the "Calibration output folder" heading. Note that the status window in the lower left corner tells you whether the master frames were created successfully.

The Calibration Groups software will place the calibrated images into the output folder with filenames that include the word "PROCESSED" so you can easily identify them. If you would like the software to also align and combine the images, and place a combined file in the output folder, check the Output folder checkbox in the Align and Combine? section. You can choose from Sum, Average, and Median combine. If you choose Median, the images are automatically normalized with respect to backgrounds.

IMPORTANT NOTE: when you check Output folder, all images in the output folder will be used for the align and combine. This means that the output folder should be empty before you click the Process button. If other files are already in there, they will be included in the combine. The positive side of this is that it allows you to process multiple image sets into the same output folder, and then combine them at the last.

Figure 30: If you will be combining the output image files (see figure 32), you need to set yet another folder for those files. Click the "File | Output folder for combines" menu item. Navigate to (or create) the folder you want to use for this purpose. I recommend creating a "combined" sub-folder of the folder that contains your input images.

Figure 31: All three folders have been set.

Figure 32: You can use CalGroups to automatically combine the images in the output folder following calibration. Use the Options | Align and Combine options" menu item to access this feature.

Figure 33: This displays the Align and Combine dialog. To active combining of output files, make sure that the "Combine output folder" checkbox is checked.

Figure 34: When "Combine output folder" is checked, the other controls in this dialog become active. You can set the align method ("Match stars" is usually the best choice) and combine method. You may also want to check "Open after combine" so you can look at the result of the combine afterwards. Click "Done" when you are finished making changes. A summary of the align/combine settings appears in the "Option Settings" area of the main program window.

Note: The "SmartStrech active" checkbox is a good one to leave checked. When checked, all files are examined before saving to see if they exceed the limits of a 16-bit file. If they do, a 16-bit linear stretch is applied, converting the image data to a 16-bit format. Otherwise, data could be lost!

Figure 35: To begin calibration, click the Process button. You must have selected a calibration group, and you must have at least one file selected in the list of files at upper right.

Figure 36: In this example, three files have been selected for processing. As each image is processed, the lower left status window shows what's going on at each step of the process.

Figure 37: After the individual images have been calibrated, all images in the output folder are combined. The results of the combine are also shown in the status window at lower left.

Figure 38: In addition to applying calibration frames to a batch of images, you can also apply many of MaxIm DL's processing options at the same time. Processing options are applied to each image right after it is calibrated. Click the "File | Processing options" menu item to access this feature.

Figure 39: This opens the Processing Options dialog shown here. This dialog gives you access to a wide variety of MaxIm DL processing options. You can do most types of processing that MaxIm DL supports in batch mode.

Figure 40: The Background options at  top right allow you to remove gradients or flatten the background. You cannot do both at once; these operations are mutually exclusive. If you don't want any changes to the background, make sure that "None" is the active choice.

Figure 41:The Miscellaneous options at middle left allow you to flip images, mirror images, and to resize images. These features are identical to what MaxIm DL already offers, but they are conveniently located here so you can apply them to multiple images in a batch.

Figure 42: You can apply a repair map to your images. This is a very time-consuming job to do by hand. Note that you must create and save the map in MaxIm DL before you can use it here!

Figure 43: Hot and dead pixels are frequently left over in images, even when dark frames are used. You can click either or both of these check boxes to have the software automatically remove either type of pixel during processing. I typically always have "Remove hot pixels" checked.

Figure 44: There are four sharpening options, as well as a no-sharpening option. For no sharpening, click the None radio button in the Kernel Filters section. The available types of sharpening are Digital Development (which also includes histogram changes), Unsharp Masking, Kernel Filters, and FFT Filters. These correspond to the features by the same name in MaxIm DL.

The operation of Digital Development, shown here, is slightly different that the corresponding feature in MaxIm DL. You can choose between FFT Low Pass, Kernel Low Pass, and Kernel Low Pass More methods. You can manually set a background and midlevel, or you can put "auto" in these files to have MaxIm DL automatically determine the best setting to use. The cutoff should be expressed as a percentage. If you use decimals, please use a period as the decimal separator as this first release has not yet been internationalized..

Figure 45: The Settings for unsharp mask are similar to what you will find in MaxIm DL. However, you must enter the cutoff percentage and/or weight manually.

Figure 46: The Kernel filters are the same as you will find in MaxIm DL. The Hot and Dead pixel filters have been moved outside of this area so that you can apply them even if you are applying some other kernel filter to the images.

Figure 47: High Pass and Low Pass FFT filters are also available.

Figure 48:  If you bought the Starizona blooming removal software, and have installed it as a MaxIm DL plug-in, you can apply it just like the built-in MaxIm DL filters. Click the Set Bloom Removal Options button to access this feature. Note: if you set blooming removal options, and the plug-in is not available, the blooming settings will be ignored.

Figure 49: You can set up to four passes for the blooming removal plug-in. For most purposes, you should leave "Link Saturation levels" checked - if you change saturation level in any pass, it automatically gets copied to the other passes. The Saturation, Length, and Width settings are the same as for the plug-in; see the plug-in help file for details. You may well find that the default settings, shown here, will work well in 3 or 4 passes for many images. Of course you will want to adjust the saturation level to match the brightness level of the blooms in your own images (after calibration levels, not raw levels!!!). If "Auto enable bloom removal" is checked, clicking the Done button will automatically set the checkbox for bloom removal in the Processing Options dialog.

Figure 50: This shows the processing options set  up for a typical run. The "Remove Gradient" radio button is active. Blooming removal is on, and "Remove hot pixels" is checked and set to the default value of 20. Click the "Done" button when you are finished setting processing options.

Figure 51: Processing options that are active are summarized in the "Option Settings" area.

Figure 52: CalGroups is shown here set up for a typical run. The calibration group has been selected; the files to process have been highlighted; and align/combine and processing options have also been set. Input and output folder have been chosen. 

Note: If you would like a prefix applied to all of the images, you can enter it in the "Output prefix" text box at bottom right, just above the Exit button.

Figure 53: You can use the "Options | Apply processing options after combine" menu item to change the way that processing options are applied.  Instead of applying the processing options to each input image, the processing options are applied only to the final combined image. This is useful with such features as Digital Development, which works best with images that have very good S/N. Combined images always have better S/N than the individual images that make them up.

Figure 54: You can turn off calibration if you are working with previously calibrated images. Use the "Options | Disable calibration" menu item.  No calibration will be applied until you uncheck this option. The most common use for this feature is when you want to combine previously calibrated images using the "Combine input" feature.

Figure 55: When you turn off calibration, you will see a reminder in the "Option Settings" area.

Figure 56: You can temporarily disable application of processing options using the "Options |  Disable processing options" menu item.

Figure 57: When you turn off processing options, you will see a reminder in the "Option Settings" area. In addition, the text in this area becomes gray instead of black.

Figure 58: If you experience problem with CalGroups, either in starting up or with completely fouled up option settings, you can return all options to their default values using the "Options | Reset ALL options to defaults" menu item.

Figure 59: If you use the "Options | Reset ALL options to defaults" menu item, you will see this dialog. Click YES to reset all options, or NO to cancel and keep your current settings.

Figure 60: You can highlight a filename in the file listing at top right, and click the Open button to open the file in MaxIm DL. If necessary, switch to MaxIm DL to work with the file you have opened.  If you do not click to highlight an individual file, then the first file will be opened.

Figure 61: Highlight a file by clicking on it, and then use the Info button to view the file's FITS header.

Figure 62: This is how FITS header information is displayed.

Figure 63: To delete a file, click the "Del" button. The selected file will be deleted. You cannot delete multiple files at one time.

Figure 64: To select all files, click the "All" button.

Figure 65: To deselect all files, click the "None" button.

Figure 66: You can resize the window to enlarge the space for filenames. The resize amount will be saved and is restored the next time you run the program.

Figure 67: If you click the Process button when there are no images in the list, you will see this error. Click OK to continue.