Warm greetings to everyone! I want to share with the community a new program for processing astrophotography, which I developed myself. I would be grateful for your feedback and suggestions.
So, welcome.acmb is an open and free application for processing astrophotography and even more. The name is an abbreviation for AstroCombiner. Let me talk about the program in question and answer form.
Why is this new program needed when there are dozens of analogues?
I haven’t tested a dozen analogues, but I did conduct a small comparative study with three other free programs: Deep Sky Stacker, Sequator and Syril. The table with the results can be seen at the link. The main conclusion is that acmb works much faster and in most cases significantly more accurately, with a minimum of settings. I also focused on simplicity. To use the application, you do not need to be able to program, write scripts, etc. Also, the development of the project does not end, I plan to further improve the functionality and add something new.
What can acmb do anyway?
1. Stack frames aligned to stars. The main purpose of acmb. Works well even on wide-angle series of shots.
2. Stack frames without alignment. It is useful if the photographs have a foreground.
3. Calibrate images with dark frames and flat field.
4. Record time-lapse video. It's great that there is an opportunity to revive an astrophoto, or any other scene.
5. Do basic color correction: changing levels and saturation. If you don’t need some kind of tricky processing that is not (yet) available in acmb, then you don’t have to resort to the help of other programs at all and do everything in one environment.
6. Process photos in batch mode. For example, acmb can be used as a batch RAW converter.
How to use this program?
In short, the principle of operation is similar to Excel, only the table cells contain not numbers and formulas, but images and tools for processing them. Each tool can either read (import) images from disk, process them somehow, or write the result to disk. The detailed instructions are too long to fit into this post. Therefore, I recommend watching the introductory videosor reading ReadMe.
Where can I download acmb?
I post releases on the project page in github. Versions for Windows and Linux are available for download. Both of them should work out of the box: just download the archive, unpack and run the executable file.
Where can I follow updates?
I will be posting news about acmb here in this thread.
Where can I report a bug in the program or my proposal for improving the project?
You can write to me in this thread. Option for those in the know: create an issue on Github.
Can I participate in development?
If you have such a desire, you are welcome. The source code is open. You can download it to your computer, compile it, change something there and create a pull request.
So, welcome.acmb is an open and free application for processing astrophotography and even more. The name is an abbreviation for AstroCombiner. Let me talk about the program in question and answer form.
Why is this new program needed when there are dozens of analogues?
I haven’t tested a dozen analogues, but I did conduct a small comparative study with three other free programs: Deep Sky Stacker, Sequator and Syril. The table with the results can be seen at the link. The main conclusion is that acmb works much faster and in most cases significantly more accurately, with a minimum of settings. I also focused on simplicity. To use the application, you do not need to be able to program, write scripts, etc. Also, the development of the project does not end, I plan to further improve the functionality and add something new.
What can acmb do anyway?
1. Stack frames aligned to stars. The main purpose of acmb. Works well even on wide-angle series of shots.
2. Stack frames without alignment. It is useful if the photographs have a foreground.
3. Calibrate images with dark frames and flat field.
4. Record time-lapse video. It's great that there is an opportunity to revive an astrophoto, or any other scene.
5. Do basic color correction: changing levels and saturation. If you don’t need some kind of tricky processing that is not (yet) available in acmb, then you don’t have to resort to the help of other programs at all and do everything in one environment.
6. Process photos in batch mode. For example, acmb can be used as a batch RAW converter.
How to use this program?
In short, the principle of operation is similar to Excel, only the table cells contain not numbers and formulas, but images and tools for processing them. Each tool can either read (import) images from disk, process them somehow, or write the result to disk. The detailed instructions are too long to fit into this post. Therefore, I recommend watching the introductory videosor reading ReadMe.
Where can I download acmb?
I post releases on the project page in github. Versions for Windows and Linux are available for download. Both of them should work out of the box: just download the archive, unpack and run the executable file.
Where can I follow updates?
I will be posting news about acmb here in this thread.
Where can I report a bug in the program or my proposal for improving the project?
You can write to me in this thread. Option for those in the know: create an issue on Github.
Can I participate in development?
If you have such a desire, you are welcome. The source code is open. You can download it to your computer, compile it, change something there and create a pull request.
