WaveletCam: Image Processing
yong chong loh
Free

A new iOS app, called WaveletCam: Image Processing, has been released. It is unique in that it does wavelet image processing of photos on your phone using the iPhone's Graphic Processing Unit. Wavelet processing goes beyond the basic image editing of stretching (Levels) and sharpening, and can result in improvements in image details.

I did some limited testing of the app using an iPhone 13 Pro Max for afocal imaging on a 12" LX600 telescope. I took the initial images with the iOS app NightCap Camera, which gives full user control over exposure and focus.

This is the WaveletCam app user interface.

After opening a previously saved image, the app decomposes the image into six layers. Layer 1 is usually image noise, with Layer 6 having the image's large structure.

These are unedited full-frame NightCap Camera afocal 271X images of Saturn and Jupiter.

After the image is opened in WaveletCam you can "pinch to zoom" to enlarge the image to see the effects of the wavelet processing. Tap the button for each layer and move the slider to best render that layer as seen on the screen. Once you have done this for all six layers, tap the Save button to save the resultant image. The screen will "blink" to indicate that the edited image has been saved as a new image to the Photos "Recents" album. If necessary you can also adjust the amount of noise removal and save additional versions of the image. Note: there is no Undo for any of the operations. That would be a nice feature for a future version so that you can easily undo an edit without needing to reload the original image and start over.

This is how WaveletCam rendered the same images using a denoise level of 5, with only Levels being adjusted during post-processing on the computer.

WaveletCam can also be used on images of the Moon and Deep Sky Objects.

These images of M57 (Ring Nebula) were taken with the iOS app NightCap Camera and the iOS app MilkyCam Raw Nocturne (by the developer of WaveletCam). The bottom image of each object has been processed using WaveletCam

NightCap Camera



MilkyCam Raw Nocturne

Images do not even have to be taken with the iPhone. Copy images taken with other cameras to the iPhone and then you can run them through WaveletCam. The bottom image of each object was processed using WaveletCam.

Moon (D850 DSLR)



NGC6946 (D850 DSLR)

Summary

WaveletCam: Image Processing is an excellent app to have in your image post-processing tool kit. No matter how an image was taken, once you have that image on your iPhone you can make some amazing improvements in the image quality.

I highly recommend watching a short tutorial video by the developer.

Adam Block, noted astrophotographer, has written a basic Understanding wavelets if you want to know more about wavelet processing.

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