StarTools

Any chance to save as other formats except tiff, ideally .fits and even read/write pixinsight .xisf (which I think is open?).. especially restored data after decon etc...I have reasons...

Well... FITS is a data format, not an image format. StarTools is a post-processing application and its output is finished images (e.g. TIFF, PNG or JPEG), not datasets. It's the same reason Photoshop doesn't export FITS; it simply doesn't make sense.

I can't see StarTools supporting XISF any time soon (import or export). I looked into XISF when Juan first suggested it - it's always good to keep an open mind to things that can push the field forward. What I found is that, despite claims otherwise, there is nothing that XISF can do that FITS cannot. Quite the opposite is true however; you can, for example, store whole relational databases in FITS format. It is infinitely extensible. I'm actually looking at targeting FITS for storing ST projects (including tracking data) due its flexibility, while maintaining compatibility with other programs (in that sense, you may get your wish! ). Meanwhile XISF is insanely complicated for something that should be extremely simple; even this simple conversion tool, once compiled, weighs in at about 31MB (~14x size of a StarTools executable) due to all the dependencies and libraries needed.

Back on topic, what would you use intermediary StarTools output for in FITS format?

Hi Ivo,

Sorry for very late reply...Basically I use startools as one of my tools for astro. Sometimes I use only ST, but for example I find that undertaking wipe and decon then restoring to original with those done and being able to export that as a (ideally 32bit) .fits data format would be very useful to say then import into other software, not necessarily image manipulation software, it could be data analysis such as exoplanet searches etc, supernova searches etc... It would open up opportunities to also import fits into PixINsight because ST does alot of things way better, but PI also has some additional functionality too.

Bumping this- I think it would be very useful to be able to output separate fits files for RGB channels and lum to use elsewhere.

I understand the goal is to make startools fully capable to finish images and all you need but it would be nice to have the option to experiment with data after being wiped, adjusted in startools then further manipulated elsewhere. Sometimes I just can't do everything I want entirely in ST and I would like more flexibility to experiment