Starguide - A Practical Guide to Astro-Photography

PixInsight 
Linear Image Quality Enhancements

Step 3: BlurXTerminator

updated: 2025-09-28

Purpose

Eliminate blur and sharpen details.

Description

BlurXTerminator is an AI-powered deconvolution tool designed specifically for astronomical images. It is available as a plug-in process module for PixInsight only. Because deconvolution by nature requires linear image data, BlurXTerminator will not be made available for general photography applications such as Photoshop.

Not all AI is created equal. There are AI-based sharpening tools for general photography, but they were not trained with astronomical images in mind. They typically don't handle stars very well, and because they are trained as generative AI models, they have no regard for veracity and often invent details that don't exist.

The design intent of BlurXTerminator is to recover as much detail as possible based on the low-contrast information actually present in an image, without fabricating detail that does not actually exist just for the sake of making an image appear sharper. Great care has been taken in the architecture and training of the neural network to ensure that its output is as close to reality as possible when used properly.

Activation

Process 🡺 Deconvolution 🡺 BlurXTerminator

Input

The gradient corrected image from the previous step

Output

Deconvoluted image with postfix: _BX into sub folder "Work"

Previous Step

• Gradient Correction

Next Step

• Noise Reduction

Resource(s)

• BlurXTerminator – RC Astro (rc-astro.com)

• More details on X-Terminator Tools from RC-Astro:  XTerminator Tools
• BlurX and NoiseX Installation description: XTerminator Installation Hints
• In case of run time issues:  XTermination Troubleshooting

Before BlurXTerminator

After BlurXTerminator

var P = new BlurXTerminator;

P.ai_file = "BlurXTerminator.4.pb";

P.correct_only = false;

P.correct_first = false;

P.nonstellar_then_stellar = false;

P.lum_only = false;

P.sharpen_stars = 0.59;

P.adjust_halos = 0.00;

P.nonstellar_psf_diameter = 0.00;

P.auto_nonstellar_psf = true;

P.sharpen_nonstellar = 0.87;