Keith's Image Stacker free download, Keith's Image Stacker download on software download

Keith's Image Stacker - Image processing program Keith's Image Stacker is an image processing program that is oriented primarily toward astrophotography. This program lets you bring a quicktime movie or a series of image files into a workspace. Once in the workspace you can align the individual frames to one another and then "stack" them, which gives you an average. The resulting image will have a higher signal-to-noise ratio and a higher dynamic range than the individual frames.What Keith's Image Stacker provides, more than anything else, is a workspace in which to align many similar images (say from a quicktime movie of Jupiter taken through a telescope with a webcam) and then to produce a stack of the images, which consists of a single image that comprises either the sum, or the average, or some value in between of the individually stacked images.Stacking images is a well-established method for increasing the signal-to-noise ratio in a series of similar images. True "information" will shine through the stack, while random noise will drop out.Keith's Image Stacker also provides a host of post-processing commands including darkframe subtraction (for those pesky thermal noise blemishes on you webcam's ccd), gaussian blur, noise reduction, unsharp mask, flat frame field division, laplacHere are some key features of "Keiths Image Stacker":· Translational and rotational alignment· Darkframe subtraction and flatfield division· DeBayering (demosaicing)· Normalization· Averaging and/or summing (collectively known as "stacking")· Unsharp-masking· Laplacian sharpening (which is also known by the more general term wavelet sharpening, although there are actually many wavelet-based image-sharpening algorithms, of which Laplacian sharpening is only one)· Level adjustment· Gaussian blur· Wavelet shrinkage denoising· Fourier Transform editing (for removal of cyclic or periodic artifacts such as electrical interference patterns)· Star deringing and debloating· Many other operations as well What's New in This Release: · The program was not behaving properly on the latest OS versions and/or Intel macs. These resulted from a floating point round-off error. These problems should be fixed. · There was a rare but serious out-of-bounds array access in the Laplacian Sharpening Interface. Fixed. · The frequency sliders in the Sort by Power Spectrum Interface didn't line up perfectly with the corresponding hairlines. Fixed. · The Score Range displayed in the Sort by Power Spectrum Interface was incorrect. Fixed. · Version 4.2 effectively broke the method for saving a workspace without PICT compression. Fixed. · Fixed a bug that may have affected opening PICT-compressed workspaces. · If the frames were cropped after normalizing them, the normalization factor would be applied twice. This meant the act of cropping could actually change the brightness of the image, which doesn't make any sense. Fixed. · Fixed a fatal bug associated with resampling the clips. · When stacking a single image, there was a divide-by-zero error. This never caused a problem, but now it's fixed anyway. · Fixed a serious bug with cross-correlation alignment. It should work much better now, although in my experience it still tends to be off by a few pixels. Since it is fast, a good alignment strategy is to use cross-correlation first, followed by a small-search-area difference alignment ('3' key). Since centroid alignment is also fast, one can use this same strategy with that approach instead. This fix should also have some beneficial effect on sorting by Power Spectrum. · It was previously possible to define an Operation Bounds rectangle when the Frame Inspector window did not show a frame. Fixed. · When saving a stack as FITS after resampling the stack, the wrong dimensions would be used, generally crashing the program. Fixed. · Opening FITS files is a little more robust now, in that it can handle FITS files with negative values, by lifting the entire image up to a minimum value of 0 during the file opening process. · The sliders in the Histograms/Levels Interface now provide realtime feedback while they are being dragged. · Finally converted the event handler to Carbon events. This should dramatically decrease the program's CPU load. · Updated the application icon. · The upper limit on the number of pyramid levels in the Wavelet Denoising Interface is now determined by the image dimensions (the upper limit was previously hard-coded at four). · The Fourier Transform Editor Interface now responds more quickly to changes of the Brush Size slider. · In the Fourier Transform Editor Interface, the brush is less spotty and has softer edges than it used to. · In the Fourier Transform Editor Interface, the maximum brush size has been increased. · Cosmetic changes to the error messages. · Changed the way the slider positions are indicated in the Sort by Power Spectrum Interface. Instead of hairlines superimposed on the plots, the ranges are now shaded. · When opening a RAW file into the stack, you can now specify the Endian of the file. · The key commands for toggling clip deBayering have changed. Previously, 'b' and 'B' turned deBayering on while option-'b' and option-'B' turned deBayering off. Now, 'B' turns deBayering on while 'b' turns deBayering off. · The Wavelet Denoising Interface now responds much more quickly (and also produces more accurate results, although this will probably not be noticable at a subjective level). · The Wavelet Denoising Interface threshold slider provides live updating of the result in the selected preview rect if the preview can be generated in under half a second. · The Wavelet Denoising Interface now provides control over the thresholds on a per-level basis. This will assist in the removal of noise of a particular frequency. I would like to eventually make this tool as versatile (and more so in some ways, i.e., orientation sensitivity) than the Laplacian Sharpening Interface, but not today. · You can now drag-and-drop movies onto the icon in the Finder or the Dock icon, just the way you always could with individual images. · You can now open multiple movies at once. · Opening images and opening movies have been combined into a single conglomerated process. When opening both at once, all of the individual images will always be opened first, followed by all of the movies. This is important because the standard image-dimension restrictions apply, i.e., that the first image brought into the workspace dictates the "correct" dimensions. Any subsequent images, whether individual or from movies, must conform to the correct dimensions. · Multi-threading support has been added for several operations. This should provide a substantional performance increase on multi-processor and multi-core machines. · Added a new option under the View Menu called Minimal Visual Feedback. When checked, this option suppresses live feedback such as marking the currently working clip with a thick cyan border or drawing the result of an operation on a clip to the Frame Inspector window. Since the progress bar will still be displayed, this option provides a good way to speed the program up (sometimes significantly) while still being able to monitor the progress of an operation. · Some settings are now saved when you quit the program. · The Clips Window now provides live feedback during resizing (the layout of the clips dynamically follows the changing size while you drag the grow box around the screen). You used to have to release the mouse button the see the result of a resize. · Changed the behavior of the zoom box. It now toggles between the maximum screen dimensions and the image's true dimensions. · The first and last clips in the Clips Window now have a "more" label with an arrow if there are pages of clips behind or ahead of the current page. This will only occur when all the clips do not fit into the Clips Window. · Added rotational alignment. It can be adjusted manually or automatically using a difference-based method, very similar to the difference-based translational alignment. Getting a perfect alignment may require going back and forth between translational and rotational alignment several times and may require manual adjustment of either form at an intermediate stage of the alignment process. · There was some unnecessary redundancy in difference alignment. Removing it should make it faster. · The Commands and Hints window no longer use the same window, i.e., you can display both at once. · Redesigned the appearance of the Commands and Hints help windows. In addition, the Hints window can now be resized and the text will follow the new window dimensions. · Slight changes to the behavior of the sliders in the Histogram/Levels Interface when dragging past the ends of the sliders. · The gamma sliders in the Histogram/Levels interface now respond to arrows and shift-arrows differently, just as all other sliders in the program always have. · Added "Show Clipping" to the Histogram/Levels Interface. · When opening a movie with Align on the Fly enabled, the bounds rect now moves to show the proper offset location for each image that is drawn to the dialog. It used to just show the original location the entire time the movie is being opened. · Documentation updates. In addition, the docs are now provided in PDF format. If the former HTML format is desired it can be downloaded on the website.

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