Main UI Summary - setiastro/setiastrosuitepro GitHub Wiki

Workspace & Layout

  • MDI Desktop (center): The main work area is a QMdiArea where each open image lives in its own sub-window (tile/overlap/focus as you like).

    • Double-click the empty desktop to open files.
    • Ctrl+PgUp / Ctrl+PgDn toggles between the last two active views.
    • Zoom & pan state copy/paste: Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V copies and pastes the active view’s zoom/pan.

  • Dockable Panels: Panels can be docked left/right/top/bottom, floated, or hidden. SAS Pro restores your panel layout between sessions.

    • Explorer (Left): A simple list of open documents; activate by double-click.
    • Console / Status (Bottom): Lightweight, per-session status messages.
    • Status Log (Right; floats on first run): A richer, global log console wired to a thread-safe log bus. Dialogs and background tasks post here, so it’s the best place to watch long operations.
    • Header Viewer & Layers (Right): Metadata/header inspection and layer tooling (they track the active view and refresh on activation), docked near the workspace for image-centric workflows.
    • Window Shelf (Bottom, hidden by default): A dock that can be used by the app to “shelve/minimize” things neatly.

Show/Hide Panels: Use the View/Panels toggle menu (populated at startup) or close a panel’s titlebar button to hide it; your layout is remembered via QSettings.

Themes & Titlebars

  • Theme modes: System, Dark, or Light. Switching themes repolishes top-level widgets and recolors the MDI background.
  • Dark mode niceties: Custom titlebar tints for active/inactive MDI windows; readable tooltip styling in both light and dark.

Toolbars (drag-reorder as you like)

All toolbars are “draggable,” so you can re-arrange them or move to new rows.

  • View: Open, Save As, Undo/Redo, Display-Stretch (toggle), 1:1 (Ctrl+1), Fit (Ctrl+0).

    • Display-Stretch (A) has a split-button menu:

      • Link RGB channels (Ctrl+Shift+L)
      • Hard-Display-Stretch (H)

  • Functions: Core processing tools (Crop, Histogram, Pedestal, Linear Fit, Statistical Stretch, Star Stretch, Curves, GHS, ABE, GraXpert, Remove/Add Stars, Background Neutralization, White Balance, SFCC, Convolution/Deconvolution, Luma Extract/Recombine, RGB Extract/Combine, Blemish Blaster, WaveScale HDR & Dark Enhance, CLAHE, Morphology, PixelMath, Signature/Insert, Halo-B-Gon).

  • Smart Tools: Aberration Correction (AI), Cosmic Clarity UI, Satellite tool, GraXpert, StarNet, and Dark Star.

  • Tools: Blink Comparator, Perfect Palette Picker, NB→RGB Stars, Frequency Separation, Continuum Subtract, Image Combine.

  • Geometry: Invert (Ctrl+I), Flip H/V, Rotate 90° CW/CCW, Rescale, Debayer.

  • Star Stuff: Image Peeker, PSF Viewer, Stacking Suite, Live Stacking, Plate Solver, Stellar Align/Register, Mosaic Master, Supernova/Asteroid Hunter, Diffraction Spikes, Exoplanet Detector, GLIMR Isophote Modeler.

  • Masks: Create Mask, Apply Mask, Remove Mask (plus Show/Hide/Invert from the Masks menu).

  • What’s In My…: What’s In My Sky, What’s In My Image (WIMI).

  • Bundles: View Bundles (drop views to act in bulk), Function Bundles (batch run pipelines).

Menus (high-level)

  • File: Open…, Save As…, Clear All Views, Project New/Save/Load (.sas projects: views, histories, shortcuts).
  • Edit: Undo / Redo.
  • Functions, Cosmic Clarity, Tools, Geometry, Star Stuff, Masks, What’s In My…: Mirror the toolbars.
  • Header Mods & Misc: FITS Header Modifier, Batch Rename from FITS, AstroBin Exporter, Batch Converter, Copy Astrometry.
  • History: History Explorer (inspect/restore slot history).
  • Shortcuts: Keyboard Cheat Sheet, Save/Clear desktop shortcuts.
  • Settings: Preferences…
  • About: About box & Check for Updates (updates URL is preconfigured; optional auto-check on startup).

Drag-and-Drop Superpowers

SAS Pro’s desktop and sub-windows speak several custom MIME payloads:

  1. View State drops (application/x-sas-viewstate):

    • Drop on a sub-window ⇒ apply that view state (zoom/pan).
    • Drop on the empty desktop ⇒ duplicate via the dropped state.

  2. Command drops (from the Shortcuts canvas, with optional presets):

    • Drag a registered action (e.g., Linear Fit) and drop onto a target image to run it there.
    • Drop payload is {"command_id", "preset"}; the target is picked as the topmost sub-window under the cursor.

  3. Mask drops (from sub-window DnD):

    • Drag a mask out of one view and drop onto another to apply. Mask overlay visibility is controlled by Show/Hide Mask Overlay; Invert Mask is available (Ctrl+Shift+I).

  4. Astrometry drops:

    • Drag a solved WCS/SIP solution out and drop onto a target to apply/transfer the astrometric solution (pairs with Copy Astrometry in the menu).

DnD targeting is smart: the app computes the topmost sub-window under your cursor, so you can drop confidently even when windows overlap.

Shortcuts Canvas (Desktop Actions)

  • SAS Pro registers most actions with a Shortcut Manager. You can save these as draggable desktop shortcuts:

    • Create/save/clear from Shortcuts menu.
    • Drag a shortcut onto the desktop (quick launcher), or onto a view (contextual run).
    • A Cheat Sheet is available from the Shortcuts menu.

Display Stretch & Zoom

  • Display-Stretch toggles a non-destructive view stretch (great for linear data).

    • Hard-Display-Stretch profile (H) boosts visibility for very faint data.
    • Link RGB applies the same stretch to all channels.

  • Zoom: 1:1 (Ctrl+1), Fit (Ctrl+0).

  • Copy/Paste View (Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V) for pan/zoom parity across images.

Projects, Saving, and Filename Safety

  • Projects (.sas): Save/Load the whole working session (views, histories, shortcuts).
  • Save As hardening: filenames are sanitized (spaces→underscores optional), reserved device names avoided on Windows, bad characters stripped, and the selected Qt filter (e.g., “TIFF (*.tif *.tiff)”) is enforced so you don’t end up with foo.png.png or mismatched extensions.

Status & Updates

  • Console / Status shows quick notes.
  • Status Log Dock is the authoritative, thread-safe stream for progress from tools and background jobs. The app exposes a global log bus so dialogs can post without worrying about threads—watch this dock during long operations.
  • Optional automatic update check on startup (configurable); you can also check manually from About → Check for Updates…

Handy Defaults & Hotkeys

  • Hard-Display-Stretch: H
  • Link RGB Channels: Ctrl+Shift+L
  • Zoom 1:1 / Fit: Ctrl+1 / Ctrl+0
  • Invert: Ctrl+I
  • Undo / Redo: Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y (or Shift+Ctrl+Z)
  • Copy/Paste View (zoom/pan): Ctrl+Shift+C / Ctrl+Shift+V

Tips

  • If you hide a panel by accident, reopen it from View → Panels (SAS Pro keeps persistent names so restore works reliably).
  • Prefer the Status Log Dock when debugging or watching multi-step tools (e.g., plate solving, stacking).
  • The Window Shelf is useful on small screens—float the Status Log, then dock it to the Shelf to keep more working area free.