ABSTRACT
Single-exposure images are convenient but push the boundaries of what sensors can accomplish and favor more expensive DSLR systems. Even with a premium system it is still possible to improve image quality, principally through lower noise levels, using established astrophotography techniques. Just before looking at the treatment of particular scenes, it is important to consider an aspect of the averaging process; image sorting. While the averaging process diminishes the contribution of any particular image defect, it still impacts image quality. In the advanced imaging processing applications, there is usually an image-grading tool that analyzes each image and ranks them according to various quality criteria, or an inspection process that allows visual assessment by switching between successive superimposed images. The processing for the landscape content may be very simple if a single frame has sufficient quality. If it is noisy, averaging multiple frames will improve things.
