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First MacOS release of planetary post-processing app LuckyStackWorker!

Planetary Camera Processing Solar System
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Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Hello all,
I am pleased to announce the new release v3.1.0 of LuckyStackWorker, which is now also available for MacOS! 
LSW is an open source planetary astrophotography app for automatic post-processing of image stacks, with the aim of simplifying and speeding up the process.

Visit the website for download and usage instructions:

https://www.wilcokas.com/luckystackworker

Besides the MacOS release, v3.1.0 also contains several bugfixes from bug reports that I received from various people. Thanks a lot everybody that contacted me about it! Although I have tested this version quite well myself I encourage everybody to report any bugs that you may have encountered in this release.

The MacOS x64/intel binary has been tested and works as is. However as I don't have an arm64 based mac at my disposal I can't confirm yet that the arm64 binary works also on the newer M1/M2 macbooks. Therefor I would appreciate if you let me know that you have tried it on a new M1/M2 macbook via the contact form: https://www.wilcokas.com/contact.
The windows binary may still be blocked by the windows smartscreen. I am working on getting this version unblocked by microsoft, but in the mean time if this happens during installation you can still intall the app when the smartscreen pops up with the message "Your pc is protected from an unknown app", by selecting "More info" and then press "Run anyway".

See a screenshot below for an impression of the app running on the mac.

Enjoy!
Wilco.
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Stephan Linhart avatar
Stephan Linhart avatar
Hi Wilco,

thanks for this work.
I am looking forward to try it out!

Stephan
Fritz avatar
Fritz avatar
Thank you for making this software public. My first attempt with it was an image of the moon: https://astrob.in/zaf52u/0/
It worked like a charm!

CS Fritz
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Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Fritz:
Thank you for making this software public. My first attempt with it was an image of the moon: https://astrob.in/zaf52u/0/
It worked like a charm!

CS Fritz

Thanks @Fritz . Its interesting to see how people use it also in a different way than expected. It looks like you did not use stacking software but rather a raw image directly captured with a camera, correct? It's a very nice image, there is some dispersion visible though. Now that I see this I realize that perhaps adding some RGB alignment feature to LSW would be nice after all for a future release. I was always assuming people would use it in combination with Autostakkert which has automatic RGB alignment that works really well already. Thanks for sharing.

Stephan Linhart:
Hi Wilco,

thanks for this work.
I am looking forward to try it out!

Stephan

Thanks. If you have a mac there are 2 bugs that you need to be aware of thay I discovered myself only today. If you minimize the UI it will be impossible to maximize it again. Another issue is that when starting the app on the mac while having other apps open (maximized) the UI contol panel will not come on top of those windows but below them, making you wonder where the hell the control panel is, arrgs. But all in all I'd say by knowing these 2 issues you can avoid them as well, in the mean time I will try to fix them.
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abaxworld5000 avatar
abaxworld5000 avatar
Thank you for the info. I'm using PixInsight for the postprocessing and it works really well, but may be this is an easier way to post the images. Hope someday there is a substitute for AutoStakkert for macOS as well.
abaxworld5000 avatar
abaxworld5000 avatar
I tried now both ARM and Intel versions and non of them seems to work for me. It shows a spinning blue circle inside the interface all the time and doesn't allow me to do anything else. Any idea why this happens? I'm using both and M1 Pro Max and another computer with Intel i9 CPU.
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Thank you for the info. I'm using PixInsight for the postprocessing and it works really well, but may be this is an easier way to post the images. Hope someday there is a substitute for AutoStakkert for macOS as well.

A couple of years ago I ran Autostakkert on a mac using Wine. It worked like a charm, however I don't think it will work on the newer arm64 based macs.

As for the windows version I've received confirmation from microsoft that the setup file for 3.1.0 is also verified and will not be blocked anymore by the startup screen and edge download 😀
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abaxworld5000 avatar
abaxworld5000 avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn:
Thank you for the info. I'm using PixInsight for the postprocessing and it works really well, but may be this is an easier way to post the images. Hope someday there is a substitute for AutoStakkert for macOS as well.

A couple of years ago I ran Autostakkert on a mac using Wine. It worked like a charm, however I don't think it will work on the newer arm64 based macs.

As for the windows version I've received confirmation from microsoft that the setup file for 3.1.0 is also verified and will not be blocked anymore by the startup screen and edge download 😀

It still run in M1/2 CPUs using Wine ( I use Crossover to run Wine ). It’s not perfect, may be as fast as using it with my MacBook Pro with i9 CPU, but it does the job. I would prefer a native solution, but it seems is the last frontier for astrophotography using macOS. We already have good apps for all the astronomy and astrophoto for macOS but the only I know for planetary stacking ( Lynkeos ) it’s useless.
Glenn Silverman avatar
Glenn Silverman avatar
Can't open the app on my M1 MacBook Pro. It looks like it wants to load files and I keep seeing a spinning blue circle.

Glenn
Stephan Linhart avatar
Stephan Linhart avatar
I tried now both ARM and Intel versions and non of them seems to work for me. It shows a spinning blue circle inside the interface all the time and doesn't allow me to do anything else. Any idea why this happens? I'm using both and M1 Pro Max and another computer with Intel i9 CPU.



I have the same issue with my 14“ M1.
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Glenn Silverman:
Can't open the app on my M1 MacBook Pro. It looks like it wants to load files and I keep seeing a spinning blue circle.

I tried now both ARM and Intel versions and non of them seems to work for me. It shows a spinning blue circle inside the interface all the time and doesn't allow me to do anything else. Any idea why this happens? I'm using both and M1 Pro Max and another computer with Intel i9 CPU.

@Glenn Silverman @abaxworld5000 @Stephan Linhart Thanks for trying it out, but that's unfortunate. I'm not sure what the problem is but my guess is that it is some file permission issue. The 1st time it starts it wants to copy a db file to your home folder inside a .lsw folder. There should also be a log file in that folder, if it created it at all. Can you open a terminal, and type the following:
cd ~/.lsw
cat lsw.log
cat data-info.yml
 Can you then send the output result to me via my contact form?
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Fritz avatar
Fritz avatar
@Wilco Kasteleijn, thank you for answering my post. I did not feed a raw into your program, i used a stacked image created by PlanetarySystemStacker.
I used a mono cam, so I ended up with an image for L,R,G and B. Your software was only used on the L channel as the others were for color information only. The channel alignment was done in PS, so there is not only dispersion but also misaligments caused by seeing distorsion on the channels.

I think I could have fixed them by feeding the channel images into autostackert to align them, but I wanted to stick on - for me - new software. RGB alignment would be nice to have in LuckyStackWorker. I have to use it more often to explore all its cababilities, but in general I do more deep sky than planetary.

CS
Fritz
abaxworld5000 avatar
abaxworld5000 avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn:
Glenn Silverman:
Can't open the app on my M1 MacBook Pro. It looks like it wants to load files and I keep seeing a spinning blue circle.

I tried now both ARM and Intel versions and non of them seems to work for me. It shows a spinning blue circle inside the interface all the time and doesn't allow me to do anything else. Any idea why this happens? I'm using both and M1 Pro Max and another computer with Intel i9 CPU.

@Glenn Silverman @abaxworld5000 @Stephan Linhart Thanks for trying it out, but that's unfortunate. I'm not sure what the problem is but my guess is that it is some file permission issue. The 1st time it starts it wants to copy a db file to your home folder inside a .lsw folder. There should also be a log file in that folder, if it created it at all. Can you open a terminal, and type the following:
cd ~/.lsw
cat lsw.log
cat data-info.yml
 Can you then send the output result to me via my contact form?

It says "No such file or directory" and if I go to that folder manually there is a .log file there but it's empty ( no text/ code inside ).
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
It says "No such file or directory" and if I go to that folder manually there is a .log file there but it's empty ( no text/ code inside ).

Is that on the ARM or the Intel macbook? Do they both have the same result?
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abaxworld5000 avatar
abaxworld5000 avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn:
It says "No such file or directory" and if I go to that folder manually there is a .log file there but it's empty ( no text/ code inside ).

Is that on the ARM or the Intel macbook? Do they both have the same result?

In both. I tried first in the M1 computer and right now with the i9 and it says the same and the log file in the .lsw folder is empty in both computers.
abaxworld5000 avatar
abaxworld5000 avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn:
It says "No such file or directory" and if I go to that folder manually there is a .log file there but it's empty ( no text/ code inside ).

Is that on the ARM or the Intel macbook? Do they both have the same result?

In both. I tried first in the M1 computer and right now with the i9 and it says the same and the log file in the .lsw folder is empty in both computers.

Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Looks like it doesn't find the bundled java runtime, that must be the reason why it works on my macbook which has a seperate installation for it.

It will probably work when you install the JRE seperately. To do so, go to https://adoptium.net/ and dowload+install the "Latest LTS Release". Make sure to download the pkg.

I will try to fix it in a next revision release.
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abaxworld5000 avatar
abaxworld5000 avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn:
Looks like it doesn't find the bundled java runtime, that must be the reason why it works on my macbook which has a seperate installation for it.

It will probably work when you install the JRE seperately. To do so, go to https://adoptium.net/ and dowload+install the "Latest LTS Release". Make sure to download the pkg.

I will try to fix it in a next revision release.

Yes, that works in the M1, I have the same problem with the i9 so I will try the same. Seems the Java 8 from Oracle wasn't enough.
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Yes, that works in the M1, I have the same problem with the i9 so I will try the same. Seems the Java 8 from Oracle wasn't enough.


Great, thanks for letting me know and also to confirm that it works on the M1.
In the meantime I already fixed the issue and will release a revision release a.s.a.p.
abaxworld5000 avatar
abaxworld5000 avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn:
Yes, that works in the M1, I have the same problem with the i9 so I will try the same. Seems the Java 8 from Oracle wasn't enough.


Great, thanks for letting me know and also to confirm that it works on the M1.
In the meantime I already fixed the issue and will release a revision release a.s.a.p.

Welcome. It works with the i9 too installing the JRE for Intel Macs.
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Wilco Kasteleijn avatar
Hello all, I've just released a new revision 3.1.1 that fixes the problem with the 16-bit PNG files no longer opening:

https://github.com/wkasteleijn/luckystackworker/releases/latest

In fact it was not a bug in my own code but a newly introduced problem in the latest version of the ImageJ library that is used under the hood. I reported the problem to Wayne Rasband (the original developer of ImageJ) and he fixed the problem within a day.

Other than this I fixed a few other problems for the MacOS specifically:
  • The installation now uses its own bundled java runtime, no need to install java separately
  • Reduced size of the DMG installation on MacOS. It turned out that it was packaging the electron framework 3 times due to a bug in my packaging script. Now the DMG is 170Mb, still quite large but this is the nature of Electron based apps which is basically a complete chromium browser.

Enjoy, and if you happen to find other issues, please let me know.
Wilco.
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