AstroShader allows you to:
"Live-stack" multiple exposures from your iPhone
Save multiple exposures to you photos library - like an intervalometer
Edit photos with tools specific for astrophotography
🔧 You need to manually adjust all camera settings; focus, exposure time, ISO, number of exposures, and so on.
🧪 Top tip: Test with 1-10 exposures, before firing off 1000 exposures.
⚙️ Open the camera settings with the cog on the bottom right.
🖌️ Open an image in the editor with the image button on the bottom right.
Focus:
Use the slider or + / - buttons to adjust focus.
Set the exposure time to ~0.1s and focus on a bright star.
Number of exposures:
How many exposures to live-stack.
If saving each exposure this is the number that will be saved to Photos (see "Save individual exposures").
Exposure time:
Exposure time for each image.
This can be extended beyond the iOS limit of 0.3/1.0s but the results may differ from the preview so please test.
ISO:
Camera ISO with an extended range.
Camera type:
Choose which iPhone camera to use.
The wide-angle camera generally has the best sensor.
Camera timer:
Countdown timer before capture - to allow any vibrations to stop before image capture.
Rotate camera 180:
To correct for the optics - along with horizontal flip.
Horizontal flip:
To correct for the optics - along with rotate camera 180.
Save individual exposures:
This setting saves each exposure to your phone.
If choosing RAW and an exposure time beyond the native limit (usually 1.0s) this will save each un-edited RAW. e.g. Choosing 500 exposures at 3.0s will result in 1500 RAW files.
Set reposition interval:
This can be useful for untracked users to re-centre the target as it drifts out of the frame.
Activating this setting will mean after the chosen number of exposures a repositioning stop is added to the capture flow.
Manual white balance:
Activate this setting to set the white balance manually.
Pixel binning:
This setting uses a 4x4 downsampling to the image.
This can be useful for dimmer targets.
Alignment function:
This setting controls the trade-off between alignment accuracy and processing time.
Use medium or strong if you images are not aligning well.
Color / Brightness:
Brightens images smoothly.
Color / Background extraction:
Removes the dominant background color from an image.
Note: This is designed to work with deep sky images and may produce irregular results when used with day time images.
Color / Stretch:
This performs an adaptive contrast enhancement.
Color / Saturation:
Adjust color saturation.
Color / Blackpoint:
Performs a blackpoint adjustment with a smoothing function.
Color / Temperature:
Adjust image temperature (blue vs yellow).
Color / Tint:
Adjust the image tint (green vs magenta).
Detail:
This tool enhances details of different sizes.
Uses the larger sizes for nebulae that might cover a high portion of the image. Then smaller sizes for planetary or lunar surface details.
Uses the sliders together for a smoother transition usually results in a better image.
Curves:
This sliders are histogram curves adjustments.
The handles correspond to points along the histogram; 0.0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0.
Sharpen:
This tools allows you to set up to 3 unsharp masks on the image.
The steppers control the radius and the slider controls the amount of sharpening.
Save:
Save in a variety of image formats: PNG, HEIF, JPEG, TIFF.
If you are saving an image capture use PNG or TIFF for the highest quality. Both are 16bit and lossless.
Reset:
Reset the image to it's original state.
Close:
Close the current image and return to the home screen.
Note: Image are not automatically saved after edits.