Beta Testing Invitation: New Measurements & Annotations Tools 🚀

Salvatore IoveneBrian DiazJohn59framoro
• AstroBin Beta Testers •27 replies•593 views
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Hello AstroBin Beta Testers Community!

I'm excited to invite all registered beta testers to try out two brand new features that will enhance the way you interact with images on AstroBin: Measurements Tool and Annotation Tool.

📐 Measurements Tool

Ever wanted to measure the angular size of objects in your images? Or compare the distances between celestial objects?

The new measurement tool allows you to:
- Create precise measurements on images plate-solved with PixInsight (yours or anyone's)
- Display distances in astronomical units (arcseconds, arcminutes, degrees)
- Save your measurements for future reference
- Share your measurements with others via URL

⚪️ Annotations Tool

Want to highlight specific features in your images or add explanatory notes? The annotation tool lets you:

- Add rectangles, circles, and text annotations to images
- Customize colors and opacity
- Move and resize annotations after creation
- Save annotations (for image owners) or share via URL

📏 RA/Dec coordinate rulers also on zoom view

 - As with the old UI, now the RA/dec rulers can also be enabled in the zoom view.

💡 How to Access

These features are currently available only on the beta site for registered beta testers.

1. Go to https://beta-app.astrobin.com
2. IMPORTANT: Hard-refresh the page a few times to be sure you are on the latest beta app (as mentioned, the beta site does not have proper cache-busting)
3. Navigate to any image with plate-solving data (from anyone's gallery or the search page)
4. Look for the new measurement and annotation icons in the image viewer (screenshots below)
5. Click the help icon within each tool for detailed instructions

⚠️ Important Notes

1. Please don't share measurement/annotation links with non-beta users yet - the link will take them to the beta site and they might be confused. One the feature is out of beta and starts a slow roll out, people who don't have the feature yet will see a warning message informing them that that feature is not available to them yet.
2. This is not a FOV simulator - While you can measure objects and distances, please note that AstroBin will have its own dedicated planning tools soon that leverage AstroBin's unique strengths. There are excellent FOV simulators available elsewhere that are specifically designed for that purpose.
3. Beta testing phase - You may encounter occasional bugs or unexpected behavior. That's normal and your feedback will help me improve the feature, so don't be shy!

🙏 I Need Your Feedback!

Please share your experience with these new tools:

1. What works well? What did you find most useful or intuitive?
2. What was confusing? Did anything take too long to figure out?
3. Found a bug? Please describe what happened and steps to reproduce it
4. Feature suggestions? What would make these tools even better? Just don't overwhelm me with feature requests tho, please :-)
5. Let's keep the conversation here in this forum topic, and if you're about to report a bug, please first check if has been reported already!

I'm actively working on improving these features and fixing any issues you find. Your feedback is invaluable! Once we've made these tools rock-solid, I can't wait to get them released to the entire community and move on to the session planning tools I have coming up next!

Thanks for being part of the AstroBin beta testing community!
Salvatore
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Salvatore Iovene avatar
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gmadkat avatar
gmadkat avatar
Thanks Salvatore, these are really useful features to have! I tried them out, the measurements and labeling is very intuitive and easy to find and use. I cannot however, find the RA Dec  coordinate rulers on zoom views of my images. 

Thanks for adding these!

Gowri
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Jeff Rothstein avatar
Jeff Rothstein avatar
Hi Salvatore.  The Help instructions are very clear and in general the tools are intuitive.  Here are a few comments:
  • On one galaxy I drew a circle to measure diameter.  I then saved the measurement, left the picture, returned to it, and clicked the white right arrow button.  The measurement reappeared, but it was a rectangle.  It was easy enough to click the circle button, but it would be nice if the shape were saved along with the measurement.
  • If you create an annotation and then lower its opacity, the title and edit button both become similarly faint.  I lowered one circular annotation to .1 and could barely see the edit button to raise the level back up.
  • I'm not able to test the Measurement Tool on my own images.  Is it possible to create a measurement, save it, and then use the Annotation Tool  to add text?
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jewzaam avatar
jewzaam avatar
The "save" icon for annotations wasn't obvious to me.  I think it would be better next to the "Exit" button.  Maybe color coded though I know that can be an issue across different cultures.  The annotation itself is nice to create.  When viewing them, the opacity of the shape and the text are linked.  To have the text visible the shape will cover and hide the annotated section of the image.  Maybe split those or have the line around the shape be scalable?  It would be really neat to have an annotated zoom in somehow, i.e. if clicked.  I noticed if clicking the annotated shape in the main image view (with metadata) it doesn't do anything.  But if I click the text for the annotation it goes to the full page view of the image.  Annotations do not show up in this page but that may be user error.  I don't see any annotations.
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Hendrixel avatar
Hendrixel avatar
On a mobile device with the measurement tool the display is switching to full view after clicking the first point and no further zooming is possible.
So is a bit useless ob a mobile device…

And as the posting before: am I able to upload a pixinsight picture and then the measurements will be available on my picture?
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Hendrixel:
On a mobile device with the measurement tool the display is switching to full view after clicking the first point and no further zooming is possible.
So is a bit useless ob a mobile device...

Yeah, the measurements tool as well as the annotations tool only work on a static "fit to screen" version of the image. Making it so you can zoom and work on a zoomed view to add measurements is unfortunately out of the question for now. I don't consider this a tool that needs to be especially optimized for mobile use tho.
Hendrixel:
And as the posting before: am I able to upload a pixinsight picture and then the measurements will be available on my picture?

The tool works on images that are solved with the advanced plate-solving powered by PixInsight on AstroBin, available on AstroBin Ultimate. This is because it needs the advanced solution matrix to be able to know the RA/dec coordinates of every pixels. So this could not work if an image is only solved with astrometry.net.

This has nothing to with you uploading a PixInsight picture, just that the image needs to be solved with PixInsight on AstroBin.
https://welcome.astrobin.com/features/astrometry-tools
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Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Jeff Rothstein:
  • I'm not able to test the Measurement Tool on my own images.  Is it possible to create a measurement, save it, and then use the Annotation Tool  to add text?

Hi Jeff,

the measurement tool can only work on images solved with PixInsight (AstroBin Ultimate). This is not a business reason, but a technical one. I'm planning, in the future, to solve all images with PixInsight (tho the annotations might not be available for business reasons) anyway to make that tool available on all solved images, even those solved only with Astrometry.net.
Scott Schneider avatar
Scott Schneider avatar
This is a great feature.  One thing I noticed is that I was getting some overlap between toolbars - see the attached screenshot. 

This is the what I was viewing... 
https://beta-app.astrobin.com/i/27ch1a

Scott.
framoro avatar
framoro avatar
Hi Salvatore,
Thank you very much for the new very useful tools.
I have tried both the annotation tool and the measurement one. When I save a measurement as a circle and come back to the image, the measurement is at the center of the image (not in the place where I originally did the measurement) and it is a rectangle instead of the original circle.
CS
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Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
When I save a measurement as a circle and come back to the image, the measurement is at the center of the image

This is by design because measurements save only the relative positions of the start and end point, not where it is on a specific image. The reason is that you can load  a measurement on a different image. I assume some people will save their FOV as a measurement and test it on images by other people. I can see if I can save an image id where the measurement was saved so for that image at least I can place it in the same position.
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Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Hi everyone,

thanks for the feedback! I've worked for several days on multiple improvements, and I would really love to get another round of testing.

Not only with focus on the new things, but with some focus on checking that nothing else broke. These features were quite nasty to implement, and required A LOT of new code, and refactoring of a lot of existing code to accommodate them.

Seems like in decent shape now but please let me know if you find bugs!

Thanks!
Salvatore
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Hi everyone!

Last chance to test on the Beta site this weekend, then on Monday I will begin a slow roll out. This took me longer than I wanted to, and it's been a nightmare, with almost 30,000 new lines of code… so I can't wait to move on to the next thing smile

For instructions on how to test, please see the top post.

Thank you!
Brian Diaz avatar
Brian Diaz avatar
thank you ,Salvatore

 these are really useful features, just to confirm the new  measurement   function  will only be available on images with  pixlnsight plate solving


CS
Brian
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Brian Diaz:
just to confirm the new  measurement   function  will only be available on images with  pixlnsight plate solving

That's correct. The data that's only available there is required to get the information about RA/dec at every pixel. In the future I will solve all images with PixInsight in the background, also for free users, so that this feature is available on more images. Plate-solving annotations will still subject to the user's subscription for business reasons tho. Gotta pay those AWS bills!
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Brian Diaz avatar
Brian Diaz avatar
makes sense , well done

CS
Brian
Brian Diaz avatar
Brian Diaz avatar
already test all functions and i didn't  found any bugs
very easy to use and figure out 

maybe add grey light  color to selection option ,is very neutral and create a soft contrast with the galaxies background.


framoro avatar
framoro avatar
Thank you Salvatore for the great work done.
My previous comment on the loss of measurement position is now not anymore valid as the measurement remains in place such as the type (circle vs rectangle) of measurement used.
Another minor comment for the annotation tool. Would it be possible to have the annotation look like the measurement, i.e. just a circle/rectangle around the object/objects we want to highlight/annotate, without fillings?
CS
Francesco
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Another minor comment for the annotation tool. Would it be possible to have the annotation look like the measurement, i.e. just a circle/rectangle around the object/objects we want to highlight/annotate, without fillings?

Yes, but the more features I'm asked, the longer this takes Also, I think it's important to have annotations visually distinct from the Basic Plate-solving annotations, so I think initially we don't need that. Let's just see how much people use it and what they want!

The most important thing now is to make sure I didn't break anything else in the zoom view or image view.

For instance, I changed how things are for "standalone" images, i.e. when you share with the Share button so there's no context (not from a search, not from the front page, not from a gallery, not from equipment...). Before = you get the site header and you don't get the close button. Now = you are fullscreen just like when you open a slideshow when clicking on an image and the close button goes to the photographer's gallery.

I needed this otherwise it was a PITA to account for the header every time with rendering the annotations in non-zoom mode, and I think it makes sense anyway because I got asked about the Close button sometimes not being present some times
John59 avatar
John59 avatar
I have been exclusively testing the annotation as I can see me using this often.

I have noticed that on each image I have added annotations the plate solving data never comes back.
Not sure if everyone is seeing this but any annotations added to my images, removes the plate solving data.
If I go back and delete the annotation, the plate solving data returns, but only if you completely back out of the image and then return to view the data.
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Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
I have noticed that on each image I have added annotations the plate solving data never comes back.

Yes, it's by design. If you have annotation it replaces the mouse-hover. We can't have both, it gets too crowded and messy. One can always show the plate-solving layer by using the target icon in the button toolbar:

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John59 avatar
John59 avatar
Salvatore Iovene:
I have noticed that on each image I have added annotations the plate solving data never comes back.

Yes, it's by design. If you have annotation it replaces the mouse-hover. We can't have both, it gets too crowded and messy. One can always show the plate-solving layer by using the target icon in the button toolbar:


Got it . Thank you and makes sense.
framoro avatar
framoro avatar
Salvatore Iovene:
Another minor comment for the annotation tool. Would it be possible to have the annotation look like the measurement, i.e. just a circle/rectangle around the object/objects we want to highlight/annotate, without fillings?

Yes, but the more features I'm asked, the longer this takes Also, I think it's important to have annotations visually distinct from the Basic Plate-solving annotations, so I think initially we don't need that. Let's just see how much people use it and what they want!

The most important thing now is to make sure I didn't break anything else in the zoom view or image view.

For instance, I changed how things are for "standalone" images, i.e. when you share with the Share button so there's no context (not from a search, not from the front page, not from a gallery, not from equipment...). Before = you get the site header and you don't get the close button. Now = you are fullscreen just like when you open a slideshow when clicking on an image and the close button goes to the photographer's gallery.

I needed this otherwise it was a PITA to account for the header every time with rendering the annotations in non-zoom mode, and I think it makes sense anyway because I got asked about the Close button sometimes not being present some times

Seems that all new features work fine as far as I have tried.
Tks Salvatore!
Francesco
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Thanks!

Tomorrow I will deploy this to the live site but only available to beta testers, then I will add a few percentages other users each day waiting for any issue reports.

Unfortunately this means that until the roll-out is complete, sharing annotations or measurement won't make sense because you don't know if the person you're sharing with has had the feature rolled out to them, but I wouldn't risk releasing this all at once.
Jeffery Richards avatar
Jeffery Richards avatar
Looks good and ready to go. Very nice features Salvatore, well done!
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