New in Version 1.2
Summary
- Variable levels of zoom are now supported.
- A new composition algorithm has been added that may have lower noise under some conditions.
- Various fixes and improvements.
Details
Multiple zoom levels are now supported from “Fit” to 8x actual pixels. The ‘z’ key still toggles between “Fit” and “Actual Pixels.” Cmd- ‘-‘ and Cmd - ‘+’ now zoom out and zoom in respectively.
Changed how edges of the final image are composited. The edges which might have looked strange before, especially if the tracking was not accurate, look more natural now.
A new composition algorithm has been added: Dark Median. This is similar to median, but slightly darker and may have less noise in dark areas. There is very little difference among mean, median and dark median when lots of images are composited. If you have few images (e.g., less than 20), then median and dark median may have less noise than mean.
It is no longer necessary to indicate that tracking was not accurate when opening images and the check box on the open panel has been removed.
A stronger warning is now issued if the input file have an unknown color profile. Under rare circumstances unusual profiles can cause a crash.
The metadata in the output tiff files is now cleaner and more complete. It had been distorted to work around a bug in Affinity Photo that has now been fixed. If you are unable to load file written by Starry Sky Stacker into Affinity Photo, try upgrading to the latest version of Affinity Photo.
Fixed a problem that was preventing all the metadata from being copied from the input files to the output files. In particular, the XResolution and YResolution values which are often reported as PPI or DPI are now correctly copied.
Improved performance of scrolling. For Mac OS 10.13 and earlier, performance of scrolling and window resizing is very good. For Mac OS 10.14 after changing zoom level or resizing the window scrolling can be slow and jerky. After several seconds it usually becomes very smooth and fast. Window resizing tends to be jerky with significant hesitations. A future release should improve scrolling, zooming and window resizing for 10.14 and later.