Image acquisition and enhancing tool. Andromeda is a software application that will ease your efforts of capturing realtime images from different capturing devices. It was designed with the astrophotography ideea in mind and it has been succesfully tested on capturing & processing realtime frames from webcams for planet and landscape imagery. Thus it provides powerfull tools to work with:
1. Capturing and subtraction of dark frames in order to reduce thermal noise of camera chip;
2. Bias frames capturing and subtraction;
3. Capturing of flat frames and flat frame correction;
4. Real time stacking of frames for reducing noise;
5. Amplification of stacked images or output images;
6. Pixel grouping for amplification of images by using 4 pixel sensors of camera as one;
7. Target tracking and image alignment (drifting);
8. Progressive stacking of captures;
9. Overlay colour controls (brightness, contrast, gamma correction);
10. Convolution filters (sharp, blur, edge detection, emboss);
11. Low focus frame elimination;
12. Manual capturing of still frames in bmp, png, jpeg image formats (autonumbering);
13. Sequence capturing thus enabling creation of movies (delay between captures can be specified);
14. Texts overlay to specify the object, scope, camera, date and author.

In order to use Andomeda, you will need a video capturing device supported by Video For Windows OS component, such as a webcam. In case your digital photo camera can be connected to the computer in the raw mode (depending on camera drivers) it is possible to connect it to Andromeda as well and expand your capabilities to use this software (a digital photo camera will provide you with some extended settings regarding exposure times and noise reductions). If no capturing device is installed, Andromeda will show only a black screen.

The difference between a poor quality captured frame by your device and a more clear and in general better result is done by the processing done in real time by the application according to the settings described below. You may look at the processing settings exactly as filters or black boxes arranged in a certain order (from the top to the bottom of the list), through which the initial captured frame is passed and improved (or worsened in some cases). Actual displaying on the application screen or saving into file occurs only at the end. Also partially processed images may be captured to become dark frames, flat or bias frames which subsequently will be used in the processing of the real signal.

Requirements:
* DirectX 9
* VFW or DirectPlay compatible camera for video capture

Limitations:
1. An RSS feed window will appear every time you run the application;
2. You will be able to save captures only in the jpeg format;
3. Sequence capturing will be limited to 10 minutes;
4. Every 3 months a new evaluation version update will be made available and you will be required to download it (the old copy will not run anymore).

The license of this software is Free Trial Software, the price is $26.00, you can free download and get a free trial.