Administration

The amount of parameters and settings needed for controlling the plugin operation is quite big. So some convenience is provided for saving and loading all settings. PEAAnuts distinguishes between profiles and the configuration.

Profiles

The 'Profile' button in the PEAAnuts window offers various options for creating, saving and deleting profiles. One profile named 'common' will always be present. The settings in the 'common' profile can be changed, but not the name. For generating a new profile, click on the so named option, and set a name, image directory, file saving types, etc. in the dialog. Then these data plus all actual program parameters from the Stream/Stacking/Postproc./System options dialog are saved in the new profile, and may be loaded again in future.
When more than one profile have been generated, one may switch between them in a drop down list. The options 'Save current profile' and 'Save current profile as ..' offer a quick way to either update an existing profile with the new, actual setting or save the new settings under a new name.

Configuration

The configuration contains some settings which are not part of a profile. Among these are e.g. the current image size, the pre-accumulation values (PA/SPV) and the last used profile. Like with the profiles, the configuration must be saved explicitely, too, by clicking on the so named option in the 'Profile' option list. Then the plugin loads these settings automatically on the next start.

Profile settings

Name unique profile name (use normal names, without spaces or special characters etc.)
Image directory place for storing image files
Generate date subdirectories if active, store image files in different subdirectories named by date (allocated automatically rel. to the a.m. image directory)
Image file type (mono/color) specifies the file type for saving images, with separate setting for grayscale (mono) and color images. Use fits (mono) or tiff (color) if the saved data should be processed further. These types store the full data range. Tiff files come out in the simplest possible 'baseline' format, without extensions. The files can e.g. be imported into Gimp, WinJupos, Registax ect.. However, not guarantee can be given for importability in all existing graphics programs (The Tiff format is quite a nightmare.).
Generate WinJupos names it is reccomended to keep this active throughout. Produces unique file names in the WinJupos syntax, which facilites import with automatic date and time parsing. Time is converted in UT. If the option is unticked, the file will be named by the profile name plus a local time string.
Write image log export some info about the stack and postprocessing parameters etc. into a small textfile accompagnying each saved image
Add. save unprocessed stack Image saving happens after on the fly postprocessing (if active) . If one wants to keep the pure stack for later processing later with other tools, one can either disable all sharpening modules or activate this option, which causes each stack to be saved in unmodified form additional to the postprocessed version.
Currently, this option only works when one of the 'raw data' formats (fits or tiff) is set as image file type (s.a.). It does not yet work when jpg or png format is set.
Rememnber to save the configuration and/or the profile, if the data should be preserved between FireCapture program starts. This is necessary because of a general limitation in FCs plugin interface.

State of development

Keep in mind that the current release is a prerelease. Profiles are still considered somewhat volatile. If errors occur during reading, they're deleted automatically to avoid faulty files piling up in the config directory. From actual version wip6 onward, a version compatibility management is built up step by step. Profiles from the previous release are automatically converted to the new specifications. But this works only forward, so after updating, don't run a previous plugin version again, because this will delete all new profiles.