DarkMaster

DarkMaster is a simple, useful and easy-to-use piece of software that allows astrophotographers to quickly match dark frames to light frames based on temperature.

All you have to do is input the directories to the light and dark images. The output is a DeepSkyStacker file list.

When working with long-exposure images, thermal noise can lower the image quality (signal-to-noise ratio). Thus, it is common to calibrate image files with "dark frames", which are images taken at the same ISO, Exposure and Temperature as the light frames. Ideally, you would take many dark frames at the same temperature as the lights frames and stack them together to get a single “Master Dark” frame.

Stacking will remove random noise and leave the dark signal intact so it can be effectively removed from the light frames. Many astrophotographers have built up a “library” of dark frames at various ISO/Exposure/Temperature.

This is where Dark Master can help. It will examine the exif data of your light frames and dark frames and organize them by temperature (assuming your image files have CameraTemperature as a part of the exif data).