Shelly, That seems like a lot of steps to me, and it almost seems like you're mimicking by hand the use of a standard chi(k) with autobk/spline(). Do you find very different results using a standard chi(k) with autobk/spline()? If so, do you have any suggestions for how the more automated version could be improved? My experience with strong white lines is to adjust E0, kweight (=1, 0, or 2), now the low-k clamp, and sometimes kmin (I know others regularly use kmin >1, but I prefer to have kmin<0.5 and adjust E0). I adjust these until the background mu0(E) goes through the mu(E) in a way that "looks right" (yep, it's subjective!). This isn't a particularly strong white line (only going to 1.45 of the normalized mu(E), not 3 or 4 that you can get with Re L-edges), but this is the kind of result I'm looking for: http://cars.uchicago.edu/ifeffit/misc/bkg_xanes.png I know it's completely unfair to show one favorable example and say "it should be like this", so I'll say that this is meant as one favorable example, and it will not always be like this. What I'm looking for is that the background goes smoothly and fairly "straight" to the main absorption edge without swooping up or down too much. This may not always be the best background, but it's the best I can come up with for a 'rule of thumb'. This kind of background isn't always easy to get: I don't mind swooping up to part way up the white line (say to 1.2 or so on the above plot or up a little higher on stronger white lines), but I try to avoid swooping down or swooping too far up above the white line. I should emphasize that I usually start with the simplest background possible and plow ahead to the firs shell analysis, coming back to background subtraction only after I have a sense of what the first shell is doing. And then I often use a rough first shell standard chi(k) with spline(), or just refining the background with feffit(). That's probably consistent with your (Shelly's) advice, but I think it's easy for beginners to get trapped into spending way too much time on the background removal. Hope that helps, --Matt