What's new in 1.4.1 Stacking judges seeing in arcseconds, not pixels. The local-shift guard's limits are now converted at your capture's image scale, so a Barlow no longer makes the same atmosphere fail the check. A capture with no equipment attached stacks anyway when every alignment point tracked, and states what it measured under the Stack button. It still stops when tiles genuinely failed to track. Auto AP Size now runs on the planet route too, and probes a real grid for each candidate size. A Saturn that aborted at 50% invalid points now picks a smaller size and stacks. The grid you see is the grid that stacks. Derotation works on Intel Macs with a discrete GPU. On a Radeon Pro 570X every image but the reference was rejected with "Brightness validation failed". Fixed. If you have one of these Macs, this is the build to try. Analyze diagnoses say what was measured. "Target leaves the safe frame area" is gone; the groups are named by the measurement behind them, and the shrunken-disc, coverage crop and cancelled-reference messages state facts and figures instead of guessing a cause. Batch: the still-image batch takes its output format, bit depth and filename from the profile, exactly as the video batch does. A file whose detected target differs from the profile's now gets a warning in the log, the results and the CSV. Never a silent switch. Every string added since 1.3.2 is translated in German, Italian, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Frame ranking is unchanged from 1.4.0.

Strata 1.4.0 teaches the app what your captures were shot through, and spends that knowledge on better advice. It also makes combining multiple captures of one planet genuinely work. EQUIPMENT PROFILES - Create and edit equipment profiles (telescope, Barlow or reducer, camera, filters, observer) with a live optical train: effective focal length, focal ratio, image scale, and field of view. - Profiles fill in automatically from Laminar capture sidecars, or import Laminar's profiles file in one step. Captures recorded with Laminar 2.0 show a full capture card: rig, exposure, calibration, and the weather at capture time. - Every capture remembers which equipment it was taken through, and you can correct it. A capture that recorded only its camera finds the right profile or starts one. - The Stack phase now tells you whether drizzle suits the capture, comparing your image scale with what the aperture delivers at the capture's wavelength, with a button to apply the suggested factor. Sharpen's deconvolution gains a From Equipment preset that sizes the PSF from your aperture and wavelength. COMBINING PLANET CAPTURES (DEROTATION) - Saturn's rings are now recognized at any orientation in the frame, not just when they lie left to right. - Blending hands off softly at the planet's limb and at the rings' outer edge, so sharpening a combined image no longer reveals seams. The rings are averaged in place, which is what cuts their noise. - Stacked images of different sizes now combine: Strata aligns them on the planet and trims to the area every capture saw. - Choosing Derotate and Combine Images always lands on the Derotate phase. - Process each video into a stacked image, combine the stills, then sharpen. The result should beat the best single capture of the night. MACOS 27 AND SMALL MACS - The Sharpen preview updates while you drag sliders on the macOS 27 beta, and the viewport no longer flashes during window resizing. - The main window fits smaller displays again: the phase row compresses to icons when space is short. - Deconvolution's blend control now reads Amount and increases the effect to the right, like every other slider. Saved profiles are unaffected. ALSO - SER timestamps read correctly even in files that store FILETIME-epoch stamps, which some tools display 1,600 years early. - Dropping a capture together with its sidecar or text file opens it as one capture instead of diverting to batch staging. - Batch color no longer applies a solar palette that was never recorded in the profile.

Strata 1.3.2 Strata now speaks German, Italian, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Every part of the interface is translated, from the phase toolbar to the SER health report and the quit dialog. Strata follows your Mac's language list (System Settings > General > Language & Region, or per app). These translations are AI generated and have not yet been reviewed by native speakers. If you catch something that does not seem quite right, send a screenshot with the correction to support@macobservatory.com and it will be fixed in the next build. Logs, exported metadata, file names and the Batch Analysis CSV stay in English so a support log reads the same everywhere. A full Moon or Sun no longer loses its corners. With Normalize Capture off, a full-disc capture used to fall back to an alignment method that failed on hundreds of frames, and the crop that followed trimmed the limb on all four sides. It now aligns on the disc itself, the same way it already did with Normalize on. Stacked pixels change only for full-disc Moon and Sun captures processed with Normalize off; planetary stacks and Normalize-on stacks are unchanged. Reported by Hardy Hemmi. A GPU fault during stacking is reported instead of hidden. If the GPU fails while accumulating a frame in Strata Warp, the stack stops with an error naming the frame and the reason, rather than finishing with that frame silently missing. Folder batch analyzes with the same code as the Analyze phase, so a batch cannot quietly drift from what you would get by hand. Analyze now says when Frame Count is the right choice for a sequence. When a file comes from a Batch Analysis table that looks like one observing run, a note under the frame selection control explains that a fixed count keeps the noise consistent from file to file. Asked for by Davor Orel. Also in this build: a profile saved in Frame Count mode shows its count in the summary; typing a comma decimal such as 12,5 in the palette editor no longer snaps back; counts in sentences group their digits the way your locale does; and the Gradient quality metric analyzes a little faster on multi-core Macs.

Reading a night’s work is now easier. You can sort captures by filename or capture time, in addition to quality, so eclipse, timelapse, and mosaic sequences stay in the order they were captured. Flagged captures now show the reason directly in the sidebar, and batch reports include per-file quality data to make it easier to identify captures worth reprocessing. Exported files now record the stacking method used to create them. The filename template has also moved to Settings, where you can configure it once instead of setting it during stacking or export.

Strata 1.3 adds a new stacking method and a new way to choose your frames. Strata Warp+ is a new optional stacking method. Standard Strata Warp picks each region's frames by how well they match a reference image built from your whole capture. Warp+ instead measures the actual sharpness of every frame at every region and keeps each region's genuinely sharpest moments, so a crater rim and a sunspot group can each keep the instants when the air steadied over them. The result is slightly more fine detail with slightly less noise, most visible after sharpening and on captures where the seeing varied. The trade-off is time: Warp+ examines far more of your capture, so stacking takes roughly two to four times longer. Strata Warp remains the default and is completely unchanged, and your existing profiles keep working exactly as before. Frame selection gains a Frame Count mode. Alongside Auto and Manual %, you can now select an exact number of frames, such as the best 400. This keeps noise levels consistent from stack to stack, which matters when you process a whole session into a timelapse. If a capture holds fewer frames than you asked for, Strata stacks everything it has and says so. Two filename improvements: the frames token now reflects your selection setting in either mode, and a new framecount token writes the actual number of frames that went into the stack. Saved images now carry a complete processing summary in their metadata no matter how you saved them, and the built-in help explains exactly where to find it in your favorite editor. Plus: the interface stays smooth and responsive during long stacking and analysis runs, and analysis settings now lock while a run is in progress so results always reflect one consistent set of choices.

FASTER PROCESSING - Quality analysis is dramatically faster on some Macs. A GPU bottleneck that could slow frame scoring by more than 100x on certain graphics chips has been eliminated. Scores are unchanged, and identical runs now produce identical results. - Every processing route now reads each video from disk only once for analysis and normalization, instead of re-reading hundreds of frames per file. - Batch processing reads the next video in the background while the current one is stacking and exporting, so the disk never sits idle between files. Large batches finish substantially faster end to end. TRUE DRIZZLE - Drizzle is now the genuine Fruchter-Hook algorithm, the method developed for the Hubble Space Telescope, instead of interpolation-based upscaling. On undersampled captures of any target, planetary, lunar, or solar, it recovers real fine detail that the un-drizzled stack cannot represent. We validated the recovery with real capture data, measuring genuine detail all the way to the telescope's theoretical resolution limit. If your camera undersamples your telescope, try 2x. SER, TAKEN SERIOUSLY - New SER Utility (File > Inspect SER File): diagnoses any capture file in about a second, explains what it found, and writes a repaired copy of a damaged file without ever touching the original. Import also shows a health badge for every loaded SER. - 16-bit SER byte order is now detected from the file's content and honoured through the entire pipeline, with a manual override in Import for ambiguous files. - Captures from CMYG-type sensors are refused with a clear explanation instead of being decoded to wrong colour. FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS - Fixed a defect that could corrupt the stacking of color SER videos. - Files added to a finished Batch Analysis session now analyze automatically and join the ranking. - Export captions and FITS metadata now state the frame selection plainly, for example "1064/2999 frames (top 35% selected)". - The built-in Help is updated throughout, including a new guide to drizzle and the SER tools.

SER, taken seriously — plus a round of important fixes. • New: SER Utility (File > Inspect SER File). Check any SER capture's health in under a second: frame accounting, timestamps, dropped-frame gaps, and byte order. Repair broken files to a new copy; your originals are never touched. • New: a Health badge in Import shows the loaded capture's verdict at a glance, with the full report one click away. • New: Processing Profiles has its own resizable window (View > Processing Profiles), with a sortable table and a readable summary of each profile. Your saved profiles are unchanged. • Fixed: batch processing and manual processing of the same file with the same profile now produce the same image. They had quietly drifted apart in how alignment points were placed, leaving batch results slightly softer in places. • Fixed: big-endian 16-bit SER files now decode correctly through the entire pipeline. Strata verifies byte order from the image data itself, and a manual override is available in Import. • Fixed: SER files from CMYG-sensor cameras are now refused with a clear explanation instead of being silently decoded to wrong color. • Fixed: importing a finished image no longer locks the imaging target, so you can correct a wrong auto-detection and reach the right profiles. • Fixed: captures dropped into a finished Batch Analysis session used to appear in the ranking without scores and could never be analyzed. They now analyze automatically, show their progress, and join the ranking. • Fixed: changing the Bayer pattern or byte order while frame analysis is running could let the old analysis publish stale results. Source setting changes now cancel the in-flight analysis cleanly. • Fixed: the comparison view could show the wrong image after restoring sharpened work, and the Color phase's comparison tabs used a reduced-resolution proxy instead of the full image.

Version 1.1.2 Batch processing now makes sure it can save your images before it starts. If Strata does not yet have permission to write to the output folder, it asks you to choose that folder and then runs the batch. Previously the batch would start and every file would fail at the very last step, after all of the stacking and sharpening work was already done. Also in this update: - The staged batch screen now tells you up front when Strata cannot save to the folder shown, instead of waiting until you press Process. - Saving a batch report tells you if it could not be written. Before, no file appeared and nothing was said. - A file that cannot be saved is no longer processed a second time before Strata gives up.

What's New in 1.1.1 Strata now records when your light was actually collected, and analysis keeps your drive working instead of pausing to think. Your exported filenames carry the capture time Stack a Jupiter, Saturn or Mars capture and the exported file is named with the capture midpoint in UTC, in a form Strata reads back exactly. Once a capture becomes a flat image, the filename is the only surviving record of when it was taken, and it is what Derotate uses to work out how far the planet turned between captures. Only times Strata can actually vouch for A time read out of a filename, or taken from a file's date on disk, is a guess, and Strata no longer writes guesses as fact. Capture applications commonly put local time in filenames, which can be hours and a day away from the truth. When Strata cannot verify the time, it says so on screen rather than quietly naming your file after an assumption. Files record the whole capture, not just an instant TIFF, FITS, PNG and JPEG exports now carry when the capture started and when it ended. A stacked image represents a span of time, and knowing that span is what lets you judge rotational smear or weigh a 30 second capture against a five minute one. Strata reads this back too, so timing survives stacking, saving, reopening and exporting again. The Filename card is clearer The editable field holds just the label, built by clicking the variables you want. The capture time is added automatically, explained in plain language, and the card always shows the complete filename you will get. Analysis keeps the disk streaming Strata used to read a batch of frames, process them while the drive sat idle, then read the next batch, dozens of times per capture. It now reads ahead, so the drive works continuously from the first frame to the last. On a 45 GB capture the drive is now idle for two thousandths of a second across a 28 second read. This helps most on slower or external drives; if your captures live on a fast internal SSD, analysis was already close to your hardware's limit. Fixed The RGB histogram no longer overshoots the Levels card in Color mode. Phase buttons are no longer offered when nothing is loaded. Worth knowing before you update If you image Jupiter, Saturn or Mars, your exported filenames will look different from previous versions. This is deliberate. Nothing in a saved profile breaks, and the timing variables you may have used in templates still work, but the automatic capture time is now the one carrier of timing in a filename.

What's New in Strata 1.1 The Color phase gets its biggest update yet. LEVELS AND HISTOGRAM A new Levels card opens the Color phase for every image, mono or color. Set the black point, midtone gamma, and white point on a live histogram with draggable stops, numeric entry, and per-slider resets. A clip readout shows exactly how many pixels a black point cut: on planetary images it counts inside the planet disk, with the sky excluded, so crushing empty background reads as intended, not as clipping. On color images, a Lum | RGB toggle overlays the three channel curves. COLOR PALETTES Solar colorization now has a full palette system. A floating Palettes panel lets you browse and edit while the image stays visible and live: click any palette to see it applied instantly. Ten built-in palettes ship in this release, including five new looks drawn from community practice: Traditional Fire, Golden Amber, Solar Orbiter False Color, Copper-Neon Inverse, and 3D Chromosphere, plus H-alpha Inverted. Built-ins are locked; duplicate one to make your own, then recolor any stop with the native color picker and move its position along the gradient. Palettes can carry from two to eight stops, so you can recreate nearly any gradient recipe you find online. BACKGROUND TINT A new color well under Color Floor tints the area below the floor, for warm-background looks on solar images. Surface contrast knows not to re-texture a tinted background. PROFILES AND BATCH Profiles capture a complete copy of your selected palette, so batch processing reproduces exactly what you saved, and editing or deleting a palette later never changes your existing profiles. ALSO IN THIS RELEASE The Final Brightness & Contrast card is now called Tone. The built-in help has full documentation for everything above. Note: combining Levels with Neutralize Background or Auto Balance now measures those corrections on the leveled image, so that combination renders more accurately than in previous builds and output may shift slightly.

Sharper edges from Strata Warp, now the default Strata Warp could leave creases and distorted edges in smooth areas and around the lunar limb, where it had no alignment points to work from. That is fixed, and Strata Warp is now the default stacking method so new sessions get the quality engine without having to choose it. Simple Average is still there as a baseline for comparison. Export in mono or RGB A new Channels option on the Export phase. Monochrome captures no longer export as RGB files three times the size for no extra information. Left on Automatic, Strata detects whether an image genuinely carries colour and writes accordingly, so mono work writes mono and colour work stays colour. The setting is saved in profiles, so batch processing follows it too. Metadata that tells the truth Exported TIFFs now carry their capture date, which had never been written. Frame rate and duration are left blank when a file does not actually record them, instead of showing an assumed 30 fps and a duration derived from it. And export filenames keep the correct year on Macs set to a non-Gregorian calendar. Color correction at higher drizzle Auto Balance and automatic channel alignment now work at 2x and 3x drizzle, where they previously did nothing. Also in this release The Original and Comparison tabs now render as sharply as Enhanced at high zoom. The comparison divider stays in view when zoomed and panned. Option and arrow keys step numeric fields finely, as the tooltips have always described.