DeepSkyStacker 5.1.5

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 5.1.5

This release supersedes DeepSkyStacker 5.1.4

Only 64 bit versions of Windows 10 and later are supported in this release.

If you need a version of DeepSkyStacker that will run on older versions of Windows or on 32 bit versions, you should use DeepSkyStacker 4.2.6:

https://github.com/deepskystacker/DSS/releases/tag/4.2.6

To run the downloaded executable:

RIght-click on DSS-Setup.exe after you have downloaded it and select Properties. At the bottom of the first tab you will see a message saying:

Select "Unblock", and click on OK. You should then be able to run the installer.

Known problems:

1. When the image exposure is less than 1ms and double-click to edit is used, if the user clicks away from the editor, then the exposure is set to zero.
   This requires too much work to fix in this release, as we will need to implement our own edit control.

Changes since DeepSkyStacker 5.1.4

1. Write Intermediate TIFF format files with COMPRESSION_NONE. Final output files will still be compressed.

2. Remove any .stackinfo.txt files that already exist when re-registering images.
   This prevents incorrect registration of images when changing stacking settings and de-Bayer settings.

3. Change Raw/FITS DDP settings so that the Bayer transformation (Bilinear/AHD/Drizzle/SuperPixel) on the two tabs “mirror one another”.
   That’s to say if you change those settings on the FITS tab, then the RAW tab is also changed and vice-versa.
   There are no longer separate settings for the Bayer transformation for RAW and FITS (which has caused problems in the past).

4. Bug fix: Revert change to create masters as float - it caused incompatibility problems.

Changes for DeepSkyStacker 5.1.4

1. Upgrade CFITSIO library to 4.2.0

2. Always create a trace file in the DeepSkyStacker sub-folder of the user's Documents folder. The file will be called e.g.

   DSSTrace_yyyy-mm-ddThh-hh-ssZ.log where the timestamp is GMT (UTC) time.

   The trace file will be deleted on normal application exit, but retained in the event of an exception.
   An option is provided to keep the file.

3. Add both Main Group and Group 1 at startup.

4. Initial code changes for Qt 6.5.1 Dark/Light Theme support

5. Add an option to turn off beeps on completion of registering/stacking.

6. Toolbar display improved (no square boxes round active/hovered buttons).

7. Upgrade libtiff to 4.5.0

8. Add code to handle TIFF tags TIFFTAG_CFAREPEATPATTERNDIM and TIFFTAG_CFAPATTERN when processing TIFF files in CFA format. These tags are defined in the TIFF/EP standard.
   Add code to handle EXIF tag EXIFTAG_CFAPATTERN which is defined in the EXIF standard.
   This allows automatic detection of the CFA pattern needed to decode the file.
   The only files that DSS writes as TIFF in CFA format are some of the master files.
   All other TIFF output files will remain RGB.

9. Change compression of TIFF format master files to use PKZIP Deflate instead of no compression.

10. Change default compression for saving images to PKZIP Deflate (was NONE).

11. Convert DeepSkyStackerLive to Qt.

12. Use floating point instead of 16-bit fixed point for master files. Old master files will still work.

13. Prevent undocked sidebar and image list windows from being closed (never to be seen again).

14. Suppress warning message "ZIPEncode: Encoder error: buffer error." when writing TIFF files.

15. Remove Microsoft CGI+ dependency for loading jpeg and png images.

16. FITS output files didn't contain the number of images in the stack. Save this using FITS keyword NCOMBINE, also report the number of images when loading FITS images.

17. Bug fix: Correct code for reading floating point FITS files (the value was incorrectly normalised - e.g.: 256.0 was read back as 259.996).

18. Bug fix: Value of FITS SOFTWARE keyword in output file truncated after first character.

19. Bug fix: Unable to stack images with no stars when using Alignment set to "No Alignment".

20. Improve handling for FITS DATE-OBS keyword. DATE-OBS in the output file will now be set to the value of DATE-OBS from the first input file or, failing that, the creation timestamp or last modification timestamp of the file whichever is earlier.

21. Processing/Save picture to file... did not preserve FITS keywords when the final autosave file was written as a FITS file.

22. Bug fix: Delete key to delete images from the list didn't update the information lines.

23. Bug fix: Clear list didn't reset the status bar message.

24. Work around for Qt bug (QTBUG-46620) with restoring application position and size when re-opening the application after it was closed when maximised.

25. Mouse wheel zooming worked the opposite way from most other applications, now changed to be compatible.

26. Extend exposure time edit control to 4 decimal places instead of 3.

27. Check lights when loaded using either "Open picture files" or using Drag/Drop.

28. Correct Intermediate Files tab of Stacking parameters. "Create a calibrated file ..." and "Create a registered/calibrated file ..." were inadvertently switched when porting the code for version 5.

29. Bug fix: Saving the intermediate calibrated image in de-Bayered format resulted in a corrupt file.

30. The comet position interpolation code has been re-written by Martin Toeltsch (thank you Martin). Now you need only to:

    o Mark the position of the centre of the comet in 2 light frames with a large temporal distance (ideally the first and the last light frame in chronological order).

    o Marking the comet centre in additional light frames can potentially improve the results.

31. Change some of the colours used when the Windows Dark Theme is in use so that they are easier to read.

32. Revert change made for number 26 - QTimeEdit doesn't work right with 4 decimals.

33. Bug fix: Magnifying glass over image area was still displayed when mouse was moved directly to another window.

34. Bug fix: Selecting/Deselecting "Create a calibrated file for each light frame" should also Enable/Disable "Save a debayered image..."

35. Bug fix: Unable to cancel Registering or Stacking because the ProgressDlg was disabled (it had the wrong parent).

36. Bug fix: Save/Restore of docked window sizes (Explorer Bar, Picture List) wasn't working.

37. Update zlib to 1.3 (from 1.2.11).

38. Bug fix: Switching away from Settings/Output tab and then switching back reset the values to status quo ante.

39. Bug fix: Output file name when using file list name as the output name was incorrectly set to (e.g.) Batch1.tif when using a file list with a name Batch1.xxx.dssfilelist

40. Clear image list at end of batch stacking.

41. Upgrade CFITSIO library to 4.3.0

42. Bug fix: If a recommended setting is clicked to activate it the revised recommendations are appended to the browser when it should be cleared before they are displayed.

43. Bug fix: DSS-CL: If an output file is named specifically with the /O: parameter, this output file is always used. If it is omitted, it will generate a unique output file instead.

44. Bug fix: DSS-CL: If the compression level for a TIFF file is set via the /OCx parameter, this is now honoured.

45. Bug fix: When registering a set of images with different exposure times, the progress dialogue restarted counting at 1 and the progress bar was reset to 0 for each different exposure. The estimated time for completion got completely confused, and the progress bar reached 100% a number of times.

46. Bug fix: Prevent TIFF code issuing TIFFSetField: D:/dss.tif: Unknown pseudo-tag 65557, by only setting TIFFTAG_ZIPQUALITY if compression is set to COMPRESSION_DEFLATE.

47. Change the minimum update interval for the progress dialog to 0.1s (was 1s).

48. Bug fix: Units on the Processing pane's Luminance tab were displayed incorrectly as Å° instead of °.

49. Bug fix: Deadlock in DSSLive when stacking FITS files because CFITSReader::Read() didn't issue an End2() call to match the Start2() call.

50. Bug fix: Null pointer passed to XYSeries::append() by ChartTab.cpp. Some code tidyups as well.

51. Add "How To" information to the help for the image editor built into DeepSkyStacker. This includes a short screen capture movie.

52. Resolve problem of clipped controls on processing page when the native language is set to Japanese.

DeepSkyStacker 5.1.3

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 5.1.3

This release is for 64 bit versions of Windows 10 or higher.

If you need a version of DeepSkyStacker that will run on older versions of Windows or on 32 bit versions, you should use DeepSkyStacker 4.2.6:

https://github.com/deepskystacker/DSS/releases/tag/4.2.6

To run the downloaded executable:

RIght-click on DSS-Setup.exe after you have downloaded it and select Properties. At the bottom of the first tab you will see a message saying:

Select "Unblock", and click on OK. You should then be able to run the installer.

This is a bug fix release for problems reported against 5.1.0, 5.1.1 and 5.1.2

1. Possible bug fix - DeepSkyStacker terminated at startup when running on ARM version of Windows 11 in x64 emulation mode. Unable to test.

2. Bug fix - A corrupt info.txt file caused an infinite loop.

3. Diagnostic added - Report processor architecture and processor type in trace file and to stderr at startup.

4. Bug fix - Stacked FITS images in SuperPixel mode were displayed only in the top left corner.

5. Bug fix - Resolve occasional odd problems when using edit stars mode.

6. Bug fix - DeepSkyStackerCL was only displaying the help text regardless of command line input.

7. Enhancement - Reinstate Image Properties as a Qt based dialogue to allow changing e.g. exposure for multiple images at once

8. Bug fix - Fields in the image list and the group tabs were not updated when switching to another language.

9. Bug fix - remove all "Set Black Point to Zero" recommendations from "Recommended Settings"

10. Bug fix - Invalid input in RAW/DDP settings for scale factors caused an assertion failure

11. Bug fix - correct handling of file types (TIFF/FITS) in DeepSkyStackerCL for intermediate and final files

12. Bug fix - correct handling of Stacking Mode (Standard/Mosaic/Intersection/Custom)

13. Bug fix - unable to select a custom rectangle immediately after opening image file

14. Bug fix - fileids in filelist files were being incorrectly written as ANSI not UTF8

15. Bug fix - the selection for a custom rectangle was not always visible

16. Enhancement - reduce the minimum size for the image list to be two rows

17. Bug fix - correct problems with drag drop of a directory.

18. Enhancement - if Custom Rectangle mode is read from a filelist or settings file, switch to Intersection mode.

19. Bug fix - correct handling of reference frame in filelist.

20. Bug Fix - FITS/DDP choice of Camera was not being handled correctly.

21. Bug fix - ensure that reference frame is used a) when checked, and b) when not checked

22. Bug fix - Register settings set a value of 0 for the luminance threshold when it was initially set to 20.

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 5.1.0

This release is the start of the process of converting the code to Qt so that it can be ported to platforms other than Windows.

Here are the main changes that were made for DeepSkyStacker 5.1.0:

1. The bulk of the code for the "Stacking" panel has been converted to Qt. This includes a completely reworked image display.

2. The image list can now be undocked from the bottom of the Stacking panel so that it operates as a separate window. The "Explorer" bar (left panel) can also be undocked.

3. It is now possible to rename all groups with the exception of the initial group (Main Group).

4. Some fields in the image list (Type, ISO/Gain, and Exposure) can be double-clicked to change the values.

5. A large number of internal changes have been made with the intent of facilitating future enhancements and/or to improve processing.

6. SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data - also known as Advanced Vector Extensions or AVX) support for decoding raw images and for registration and stacking of RGGB images. It can deliver dramatic reductions in processing times, but it depends on your processor and clock speed, so don't assume it will be faster. As an example, Martin Toeltsch (who wrote the code) reports times to process 10 Nikon NEF files (on his computer):

   Without SIMD 52s
   Using SIMD 8s

   This also works for GBRG images so Canon CR2 files will benefit from this work as well.

7. Some further tuning of the OpenMP (multi-processor support) has been done.

8. The "Stacking" panel image display now caches the last twenty images displayed, so you can use it as a "blink comparator"

9. The configured settings that are stored in the Windows registry are not compatible with earlier releases which stored them in the registry hive:

   HKCU\Software\DeepSkyStacker\DeepSkyStacker

   so now the settings are held in a separate registry hive:

   HKCU\Software\DeepSkyStacker\DeepSkyStacker5

10. The "Processing" panel is still running MFC code but has minor changes to allow it to work as a child of a Qt window.

11. The location for storing DeepSkyStacker settings files has changed from %ProgramData%\DeepSkyStacker (typically C:\ProgramData\DeepSkyStacker) to %AppData%\DeepSkyStacker\DeepSkyStacker5 (typically C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\DeepSkyStacker\DeepSkyStacker5). You may wish to copy any old settings files to the new location.

12. A file association is now created during installation so that .dssfilelist files will be opened by DeepSkyStacker.

13. Add code to capture non C++ exceptions (e.g. SIGINT, SIGILL, SIGFPE, SIGSEGV, and SIGTERM) and write a debugging backtrace to stderr and to the trace file if active.

14. Change message for incompatible images to report the reason.

15. Registering and stacking now overlap processing with reading the images. For n images where time to load each image is L and time to process each image is P, the total time will now typically be nL + P (when L > P) or L + nP. Typically, the time to load the images will predominate on faster systems or those that use real disk drives.

16. Remove manual setting of "Set Black Point to Zero", this is now determined automatically.

17. Enable the Comet tab in Stacking Settings when it is invoked from Register Settings and Comet data is available.

18. Change LibRaw supported camera list so that "Olympus OM-1" is recognised as well as "OM Digital Solutions OM-1"

19. Update Libraw to 0.21.1

20. Bug fix - active tab jumped back to Main Group after drop of files when another group was active.

DeepSkyStacker 5.1.0

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 5.1.0

This release Is for 64 bit versions of Windows 10 or higher.

If you need a version of DeepSkyStacker that will run on older versions of Windows or on 32 bit versions, you should use DeepSkyStacker 4.2.6:

https://github.com/deepskystacker/DSS/releases/tag/4.2.6

To run the downloaded executable:

RIght-click on DSS-Setup.exe after you have downloaded it and select Properties. At the bottom of the first tab you will see a message saying:

Select "Unblock", and click on OK. You should then be able to run the installer.

Only 64 bit versions of Windows 10 and later are supported in this release.

This release is the start of the process of converting the code to Qt so that it can be ported to platforms other than Windows.

Here are the main changes that were made for DeepSkyStacker 5.1.0:

1. The bulk of the code for the "Stacking" panel has been converted to Qt. This includes a completely reworked image display.

2. The image list can now be undocked from the bottom of the Stacking panel so that it operates as a separate window. The "Explorer" bar (left panel) can also be undocked.

3. It is now possible to rename all groups with the exception of the initial group (Main Group).

4. Some fields in the image list (Type, ISO/Gain, and Exposure) can be double-clicked to change the values.

5. A large number of internal changes have been made with the intent of facilitating future enhancements and/or to improve processing.

6. SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data - also known as Advanced Vector Extensions or AVX) support for decoding raw images and for registration and stacking of RGGB images. It can deliver dramatic reductions in processing times, but it depends on your processor and clock speed, so don't assume it will be faster. As an example, Martin Toeltsch (who wrote the code) reports times to process 10 Nikon NEF files (on his computer):

   Without SIMD 52s
   Using SIMD 8s

   This also works for GBRG images so Canon CR2 files will benefit from this work as well.

7. Some further tuning of the OpenMP (multi-processor support) has been done.

8. The "Stacking" panel image display now caches the last twenty images displayed, so you can use it as a "blink comparator"

9. The configured settings that are stored in the Windows registry are not compatible with earlier releases which stored them in the registry hive:

   HKCU\Software\DeepSkyStacker\DeepSkyStacker

   so now the settings are held in a separate registry hive:

   HKCU\Software\DeepSkyStacker\DeepSkyStacker5

10. The "Processing" panel is still running MFC code but has minor changes to allow it to work as a child of a Qt window.

11. The location for storing DeepSkyStacker settings files has changed from %ProgramData%\DeepSkyStacker (typically C:\ProgramData\DeepSkyStacker) to %AppData%\DeepSkyStacker\DeepSkyStacker5 (typically C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\DeepSkyStacker\DeepSkyStacker5). You may wish to copy any old settings files to the new location.

12. A file association is now created during installation so that .dssfilelist files will be opened by DeepSkyStacker.

13. Add code to capture non C++ exceptions (e.g. SIGINT, SIGILL, SIGFPE, SIGSEGV, and SIGTERM) and write a debugging backtrace to stderr and to the trace file if active.

14. Change message for incompatible images to report the reason.

15. Registering and stacking now overlap processing with reading the images. For n images where time to load each image is L and time to process each image is P, the total time will now typically be nL + P (when L > P) or L + nP. Typically, the time to load the images will predominate on faster systems or those that use real disk drives.

16. Remove manual setting of "Set Black Point to Zero", this is now determined automatically.

17. Enable the Comet tab in Stacking Settings when it is invoked from Register Settings and Comet data is available.

18. Change LibRaw supported camera list so that "Olympus OM-1" is recognised as well as "OM Digital Solutions OM-1"

19. Update Libraw to 0.21.1

4.2.6

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 4.2.6

Here are the main changes since DeepSkyStacker 4.2.5

1. Fix for oversaturated pixels wrapping to black (centre of stars or galaxies are black).

2. Fix De-bloom procesing code to prevent assertion failures in GetPixel() code.

3. Upgrade LibRaw to snapshot 202101 (new camera support).

4. Fix to prevent crash when processing FITS file that is not monochrome but has BAYERPAT keyword in the header that isn't NONE (force CFAType to none).

5. Fix TIFF code handling of accented characters in file path (fix in 4.2.5 was incomplete).

6. Add code to check that it is possible to write files to the output directory and terminate processing with an error message if not.

7. Fix copy to clipboard of "Picture List".

DeepSkyStacker 4.2.5

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 4.2.5

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE WARNING ABOUT LIBRAW 0.20. Please note that version 5.1.0 of DeepSkyStacker will not run on 32 bit systems or Windows XP.

Here are the main changes that were made for DeepSkyStacker 4.2.5

1. Remove use of predictive compression for TIFF files. Use of this revealed a long standing bug in Photoshop which was able to read the files created by DSS, but then wrote corrupt TIFF files.

2. Correct a problem where DSS failed to read files whose path contained accented characters.

3. Fix for a problem where DSS incorrectly reported master calibration frames from earlier releases as being incompatible when a user specified CFA pattern was used for FITS files.

4. Fix a bug introduced in 4.2.3 which causes the code to crash when moving the sliders on the processing page.

5. Apply a development fix to the LibRaw code which was looping forever attempting to open corrupt CR3 files.

Here are the changes that were made for DeepSkyStacker 4.2.4.

1. LibRaw updated to 0.20 providing support for over 1300 cameras including Canon Eos R (.CR3 files). CR3 file extension added to list of raw file types.

***** WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING *****
LibRaw 0.20 has introduced a change that primarily affects users of "older" Canon DSLR cameras and FujiFilm X-Trans series cameras (older includes the EOS 60D and 60Da)!

The change is to increase the size of the frame area of the image that surrounds the "user area" so that top and left margins are an even number of pixels. The resultant image that DSS extracts from the RAW file will be reduced in width, height or both by one pixel. As result the Bayer Pattern (CFA) used for de-Bayering the image also has to change.

Unfortunately the LibRaw developers won't say exactly which cameras this change applies to save to say that it is not a large number. Other have reported that at least the following cameras are definitely impacted by this change:

EOS 1D Mark IV
EOS 5D Mark II
EOS 7D
EOS 60D
EOS 550D
EOS 600D
EOS 1200D

If your camera is one of those affected, you will not be able to use any existing master frames produced with DeepSkyStacker 4.2.4 Beta 4 or earlier releases as they will not be compatible. You will need to delete and re-create your master frames from the original darks, flats etc..

I am sorry that this has happened, but it is outwith my control, and the LibRaw developers were not prepared to revert the change (they wouldn't even explain why they made the change). If there were another library I could use to decode raw images I would migrate to that but after researching it over the last several days I have come up with no viable alternative.
***** WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING *****

2. Fix to display Exposure, f-Stop, and ISO setting from EXIF tags in TIFF files.

3. Update libtiff to 4.1.0

4. Automatic detection of CFA matrix based upon FITS keywords such as BAYERPAT, COLORTYP, and MOSAIC (for Meade DSI colour cameras). The FITS File tab of the Raw/FITS DDP Settings dialogue has changed. If you de-select the tick box for: "Monochrome 16 bit FITS Files are RAW files created by a DSLR or a color CCD camera", then automatic detection will be used. You can override this by selecting this option and manually selecting the CFA pattern to be used. All the other settings on that tab are now always available for modification.

5. The exposure time is now correctly displayed for FITS files with the exposure time in microseconds (keyword EXPOINUS).

6. Display a warning message saying that DeepSkyStacker won't de-Bayer 8-bit FITS images.

7. Change code to read TIFF files in strips instead of by scanline. This can reduce the time to read the image by as much as a factor of 3.

8. Refactor the code to decode the TIFF file we just read and also use OpenMP. Time to decode the image reduced by about 4-5 times.

9. Refactor the code that writes TIFF files and use OpenMP to speed it up. Also write the output file in strips rather than scanlines and use TIFF predictive compression. Substantial performance increase.

10. Refactor the code that reads FITS files to make it easier to understand and also use OpenMP. Only a marginal performance benefit.

11. Major bug fix - calibration frames were either not applied or incorrectly applied when using Super-Pixel mode.

12. Change DeepSkyStackerLive so that the choice of using the Dark Theme is controlled by the user settings.

13. Display the FITS FILTER name in the picture list control, for information only at present.

14. Change the text used in the language selection ComboBox to always use Latin characters. This is a work around a problem with DLGINIT processing and Unicode characters.

15. Fix to correct problem where jpeg files were incorrectly identified as raw.

16. When FITS file auto-detection is used, the CFA Yes/No display was incorrect - now fixed.

17. Recommended Setting for Interpolation was incorrect.

18. Fix for crash while attempting to select comet.

19. Fix for Nikon Z 6, Z 7, and Z 50 being reported as unsupported.

DeepSkyStacker 4.2.4 Refresh

Refreshed version of 4.2.4 with fix for Nikon "Z 6", "Z 7", and "Z 50" cameras

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 4.2.4
The main changes in this release are:

1. LibRaw updated to 0.20 providing support for over 1300 cameras including Canon Eos R (.CR3 files). CR3 file extension added to list of raw file types.

***** WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING *****
LibRaw 0.20 has introduced a change that primarily affects users of "older" Canon DSLR cameras and FujiFilm X-Trans series cameras (older includes the EOS 60D and 60Da)!

The change is to increase the size of the frame area of the image that surrounds the "user area" so that top and left margins are an even number of pixels. The resultant image that DSS extracts from the RAW file will be reduced in width, height or both by one pixel. As result the Bayer Pattern (CFA) used for de-Bayering the image also has to change.

Unfortunately the LibRaw developers won't say exactly which cameras this change applies to save to say that it is not a large number. Other have reported that at least the following cameras are definitely impacted by this change:

EOS 1D Mark IV
EOS 5D Mark II
EOS 7D
EOS 60D
EOS 550D
EOS 600D
EOS 1200D

If your camera is one of those affected, you will not be able to use any existing master frames produced with DeepSkyStacker 4.2.4 Beta 4 or earlier releases as they will not be compatible. You will need to delete and re-create your master frames from the original darks, flats etc..

I am sorry that this has happened, but it is outwith my control, and the LibRaw developers were not prepared to revert the change (they wouldn't even explain why they made the change). If there were another library I could use to decode raw images I would migrate to that but after researching it over the last several days I have come up with no viable alternative.
***** WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING ***** WARNING *****

2. Fix to display Exposure, f-Stop, and ISO setting from EXIF tags in TIFF files.

3. Update libtiff to 4.1.0

4. Automatic detection of CFA matrix based upon FITS keywords such as BAYERPAT, COLORTYP, and MOSAIC (for Meade DSI colour cameras). The FITS File tab of the Raw/FITS DDP Settings dialogue has changed. If you de-select the tick box for: "Monochrome 16 bit FITS Files are RAW files created by a DSLR or a color CCD camera", then automatic detection will be used. You can override this by selecting this option and manually selecting the CFA pattern to be used. All the other settings on that tab are now always available for modification.

5. The exposure time is now correctly displayed for FITS files with the exposure time in microseconds (keyword EXPOINUS).

6. Display a warning message saying that DeepSkyStacker won't de-Bayer 8-bit FITS images.

7. Change code to read TIFF files in strips instead of by scanline. This can reduce the time to read the image by as much as a factor of 3.

8. Refactor the code to decode the TIFF file we just read and also use OpenMP. Time to decode the image reduced by about 4-5 times.

9. Refactor the code that writes TIFF files and use OpenMP to speed it up. Also write the output file in strips rather than scanlines. Substantial performance increase.

10. Refactor the code that reads FITS files to make it easier to understand and also use OpenMP. Only a marginal performance benefit.

11. Major bug fix - calibration frames were either not applied or incorrectly applied when using Super-Pixel mode.

12. Change DeepSkyStackerLive so that the choice of using the Dark Theme is controlled by the user settings.

13. Display the FITS FILTER name in the picture list control, for information only at present.

14. Change the text used in the language selection ComboBox to always use Latin characters. This is a work around a problem with DLGINIT processing and Unicode characters.

15. Fix to correct problem where jpeg files were incorrectly identified as raw.

16. When FITS file auto-detection is used, the CFA Yes/No display was incorrect - now fixed.

17. Recommended Setting for Interpolation was incorrect.

18. Fix for crash while attempting to select comet.

19. Fix for Nikon Z 6, Z 7, and Z 50 being reported as unsupported.

DeepSkyStacker 4.2.3

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 4.2.3

The main changes in this release are:

1. The 32 bit version will now run on Windows XP SP3. It is likely that the next release of DeepSkyStacker will not do so.

2. The stacking settings dialog width has been increased to reduce or eliminate the need to scroll the tabs.

3. Add .rw2 to list of RAW file extensions.

4. Change the colour scheme for DeepSkyStacker Live to make it more "night vision" friendly.

5. Recognise and use GAIN values in FITS file from CMOS/CCD cameras in a manner similar to how ISO is handled for matching darks, lights etc.. Please note this is not the same as EGAIN (e-/ADU). It refers to the camera's scaling of EGAIN.

6. Update help files. My thanks to Estela Nuñez, Giovanni Benintende, Günter Heberger, José Mozart Fusco, Luc Coiffier, Михаил Тимофеев (Mickle Timofeyev), and Premysl Lukavský for their immense help with all the translation work needed for this release. Dutch help is deferred until the next release.

7. Issue #83: Provide the option to perform NO White Balance processing at all (requested by Ivo Jager for StarTools).

8. Fix for issue #42 - the stacking method "Average" wasn't always reported in the recap html file.

9. Common control library 6 now used so some cosmetic changes such as filled progress bars.

10. Make the progress dialogs non-modal so that DeepSkyStacker can be minimised while processing.

11. Update the DeepSkyStacker taskbar icon with a progress bar that matches the main progress bar.

12. Saving of final TIFF file is now faster, and a number of other performance enhancements have been made.

13. Ctrl-A will select all images in the file list (not the same as "Check All").

14. Del key will delete an image from the file list so you don't need right click and select "Remove from list"

15. Bug fix - if you change the type of an image from the file list "Properties" dialogue, the icon was changed, but the text wasn't.

16. Bug fix - Settings were handled incorrectly in 4.2.3 Beta 1

DeepSkyStacker 4.2.2

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 4.2.2

This release is all about performance, though other areas have been enhanced as well. The main changes since 4.2.1 are:

1. Changes to star registration code to detect larger stars than before. Star radius of up to 50 pixels is now valid (it was 20 pixels). This was needed to accomodate higher resolution sensors.

2. Allow larger star sizes to the specified in the Star Mask creation dialogue. Star diameter of up to 100 pixels is now allowed. This was needed to accomodate higher resolution sensors.

3. OpenMP speedup of Star Mask image reading code.

4. Huge speedup of final image display by using much larger rectangles and OpenMP speedup of the bitmap extraction code.

5. Speed up star registration by updating progress indicator once every 25 iterations instead of each iteration.

6. Computing Final Picture using Kappa-Sigma Clip processing is now about 50 times faster!

7. Computing Final Picture using Auto Adaptive Weighted Average is now about 43 times faster!

8. Auto-Adaptive Weighted Average now re-written completely. It should no longer produce whited out images or other strange results. Thanks to Michael A. Covington and Simon C. Smith for their immense help in locating references and getting this working. Thanks are also due to Dr. Peter B. Stetson who very kindly provided a web link to his original lecture notes, emailed a PDF copy of his original paper, and provided helpful guidance.

9. Update LibRaw to 0.19.3.

10. Reverted Entropy calculation code in CEntropyInfo::InitSquareEntropies() to NOT compute in parallel - some called code wasn't thread safe.

11. Entropy Weighted Average complete stack of 50 lights is now about 20 times faster on my laptop, down from 4hrs 22min to 12min 55 sec.

12. Bug fix - changing "Set the black point to 0" or "Use Camera White Balance" after an image was loaded didn't change the rendering.

13. When loading raw files, check that the camera is listed in the LibRaw supported camera list. Issue a warning if not.

14. User request to change the file open dialog to default to all supported image types including raw files.

15. Three times performance improvement in star registration.

16. As requested by Ray Butler, use relative paths in saved file lists while continuing to accept older file lists using absolute paths.

17. Miscellaneous other performance tweaks.

18. Display lens aperture information in the image lists for DeepSkyStacker and DeepSkyStackerLive.

19. Don't check for LibRaw camera support if processing DNG file.

DeepSkyStacker 4.2.1

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 4.2.1

The main changes from 4.2.0 are:

1. Fixed a memory leak in the new code that uses LibRaw.

2. Further performance enhancements to Median-Kappa-Sigma processing (20% faster than 4.2.0).

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 4.2.0

The main change in this release is to use LibRaw version 19.2 instead of dcraw to capture images from RAW image files.
This should provide support for many recent cameras which wasn't possible using dcraw.

The raw data post-processing code has had some extra performance squeezed out if it by Vitali Pelenjow who took
my initial attempt at using OpenMP to parallelise the code and made it perform as it should (new in 4.2.0 Beta 4).

The resulting images should be very much the same (if not 100% identical) to the results obtained using DeepSkyStacker 4.1.1.

There is one thing that is incompatible with DeepSkyStacker 4.1.1:

The "Use Auto White Balance" white balance button has been disabled.

You can either accept the default which is "Daylight White Balance", or select "Use Camera White Balance". If you select the latter, and camera was set to "Auto White Balance" when the images were taken, then the camera calculated "Auto White Balance" co-efficients will be used. We don't recommend the use of Auto WB as each frame gets its own unique white balance which can prevent calibration frames such as flats and darks from working correctly.

We've also fixed a number of problems and made some other enhancements since 4.1.1

1. Support for images from cameras that use the Fujitsu X-Trans sensor (new in 4.2.0 Beta 2).
   The image is converted to a 3 colour RGB image and interpolated using Frank Markesteijn's algorithm using LibRaw::Process().
   Please note that the interpolation is quite slow (about 40 seconds per image on my Core i7 laptop).
   The image is then imported as if it were a Foveon colour image.

2. BSD 3 clause license file added.

3. A fix was made to correct crashes caused by a thread-unsafe assignment in the smart pointer code.

4. The "Stop" button on the progress dialogs should now actually work!

5. The space key can now be used to check/uncheck images in the picture list.

6. The user's default browser will be used instead of IE to open URLs.

7. Miscellaneous code cleanups and performance improvements including Median-Kappa-Sigma processing.

DSS 4.1.1

Welcome to DeepSkyStacker 4.1.1

We've fixed a number of problems since 4.1.0:

The 32 bit version has been changed to build the zlib code without the optimising "asm" option to fix a crashing problem ("asm" is not officially supported in zlib and has not been maintained)

The 64 bit version has been changed to build the zlib code without the optimising "asm" option as a precaution (the 64 bit version wasnt crashing as far as we know but as the "asm" option isn't officially supported we have elected not to use it)