ForgePix ⚡

forgepix.app · Focus • Astro • Long Exposure

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

ForgePix Beta — automatic focus stacking and computational photography for macro, astro and long‑exposure series. Local‑first, AI optional. It’s usable and tested, but young — expect the occasional rough edge and please report issues.

Focus Stacking + Astro + Long Exposure. Drop your photos in, get a finished image out — in the best possible quality for further editing. Self‑contained, free (MIT), cross‑platform (Windows / macOS / Linux).

Why ForgePix?

• ✓ Analyses focus series
• ✓ Removes rejects automatically
• ✓ Computes the optimal frame count
• ✓ Long exposure without an ND filter
• ✓ Astro + macro in one app
• ✓ Works without AI (fully local, no server)

How it works

A soft focus series becomes one fully sharp image — and you see what happens at every step:

1 · Input (series)	2 · Analysis	3 · Focus map	4 · Result
9 frames, each only partly sharp	shaky dropped, optimal frame count	which area from which photo	fully sharp, ready to edit

📖 Full guide: docs/GUIDE.en.md · 🇩🇪 Anleitung

Start screen	Macro module
Camera‑Raw editor	Astro module

Highlights

(Short version — the full guide has every option.)

• One‑click Automatic (Beginner & Pro) — picks the usable frames, aligns, merges to a fully‑sharp image, sharpens gently. In Beginner mode just drop a folder: ForgePix guesses the module (file types / names / EXIF sample) and runs. In → done.
• Four modules, one app: 🔬 Macro (focus stacking, Product/Coin/Food presets), 🌌 Astro (star stacking), 🌗 Hybrid (Moon/Sun mosaic + Focus+Astro) and 📷 Long exposure (no ND filter — silky water/clouds, trails, virtual exposure‑time slider).
• Own engine (OpenCV/NumPy) — no external stacking software. Large stacks are streamed (memory‑friendly); RAW development & sharpness analysis run across all CPU cores (cached).
• Focus tools (macro): series & focus‑map analysis, DOF/bracketing assistant with EXIF read‑out, stack‑confidence score, and a decision panel with clickable findings and a “why these settings?” rationale.
• Astro: auto‑detected calibration (darks/flats/bias), star alignment (translation or field rotation) plus TPS local registration (field‑curvature fix), hot/cold‑pixel fix, sigma / winsor / linear‑fit rejection, drizzle‑lite and true drizzle (pixfrac drop), binning, multi‑session stacking, asinh / MTF / GHS stretch, real photometric color calibration (PCC/SPCC) via Siril (Gaia DR3) or an own astroquery path (lite fallback always works), explainable sub‑grading, 32‑bit linear + FITS export, live preview while stacking, and automatic GraXpert/StarNet++. Dual‑band (Hα/OIII) with HOO / synthetic SHO / Foraxx / Bicolor.
• Focus merge methods: Laplacian pyramid, depth‑map, weighted average (Method A), à‑trous wavelet, and halofix (dual‑output halo retouch) — with Helicon‑style Radius/Smoothing.
• HDR & long exposure: Exposure Fusion or radiance‑map tonemapping; deghosting; comet/trail gap‑fill; sigma‑clipping and freeze‑foreground (Sequator‑style).
• Built‑in editors: Camera‑Raw (exposure, tone curve, per‑color HSL, lens corrections — lensfun auto or manual vignette/distortion/CA, crop/rotate, histogram, mask brush) and a retouch brush over halos/ghosting.
• RAW faithfully developed to 16‑bit (DHT/DCB/VNG/AHD, AMaZE where available); EXIF/provenance preserved.
• Export & workflow: before/after slider, film strip, ghost map/deghost, export presets (Instagram/WhatsApp/Web/4K/Print), batch & watch folder, quick‑export chips, resume last folder.
• Fully keyboard‑operable, German & English UI, AI strictly optional (local or API).

Runs everywhere — AI is optional

Automatic works completely without AI (settings derived from the measured sharpness profile). No Ollama, no server, no model download. Optionally connect an OpenAI‑compatible server (llama.cpp / LM Studio / vLLM) or a provider with API key (OpenAI / OpenRouter). The AI only advises & checks — it never touches pixels. “The software explains why it chose these settings.” You can add a free‑text wish (e.g. “silky water, people sharp”) and the suggestion also gets EXIF basics + the focus map. Setup states exactly what is sent — a few preview frames, the sharpness profile, EXIF basics and your wish; no original files, no location data.

Pros can optionally connect Siril (if installed) — used both as an alternative astro engine and for real photometric color calibration (plate‑solve + Gaia DR3 SPCC) — and hand off to GraXpert / StarNet++. None of it is required: without Siril/network, PCC falls back to the built‑in star‑based calibration.

Download (prebuilt)

Ready‑made packages for macOS · Windows · Linux are on the Releases page (no Python needed):

• macOS: ForgePix-macOS.zip → unzip, open ForgePix.app.
• Windows: ForgePix-Windows.zip → unzip, run ForgePix.exe.
• Linux: ForgePix-Linux.tar.gz → extract, run ./ForgePix/ForgePix.

First launch on macOS/Windows: right‑click → “Open” (the app isn’t notarised yet — enable signing).

From source

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 focus_stack_gui.py

• macOS: double‑click ForgePix.app (optional exiftool for EXIF copy).
• Windows: run.bat · Linux: ./run.sh

First steps

1. Open the app → pick a module (Macro / Astro / Hybrid / Long exposure).
2. 🌱 Beginner (default): pick a folder (or drag it onto the window) → ⚡ Start. Done.
3. 🛠️ Pro: guided wizard with all controls, AI server, external tools, etc.

Every setting has a ? with a plain‑language explanation. The recommended frame count per module is shown right in its group — details in the guide.

Sample data to try

Curated test datasets (good and deliberately bad frames) are a sample download: astro subs (M 42 / IC 5146, Bayer FITS), a landscape RAW and a macro focus series — just drop the folder onto the window.

External tools & AI backends (all optional)

In the Setup menu (⚙) → "External tools" you set paths to GraXpert, StarNet++, Siril and Cosmic Clarity (or leave empty = auto‑detect). None of it is required — ForgePix is fully local without any of them, and every step gracefully falls back.

For Astro the optional pro chain runs in the right order, and — importantly — image filters never touch the stars: stretch → StarNet++ (remove stars) → GraXpert (background + AI denoise) → Cosmic Clarity (AI sharpening, a free BlurXTerminator alternative) on the starless nebula only → boost → the untouched stars are blended back. ForgePix can also drive Siril’s bundled Python scripts headless (AberrationRemover, AutoBGE, …).

Extra AI, fully local via onnxruntime: --upscale runs Real‑ESRGAN 2× super‑resolution on the result (any module). Heavy steps can optionally run on a remote GPU host (FORGEPIX_GRAXPERT_REMOTE) — but the default and fallback are always local.

Languages

German & English built in (switch top‑right, applies on restart). Add your own language: copy lang/de.json, translate the values, save as e.g. lang/fr.json — it appears in the language menu automatically.

Keyboard shortcuts

Photo keys (Lightroom-style): Space before/after · ← → switch image · A analyse · S stack · E editor · G ghost map · F focus map · R retouch. Commands: ⌘O folder · ⌘↩ automatic · ⌘E export · ⎋ stop/back · ⌘1–4 modules · ⌘B beginner/pro · ⌘D DOF · F1 = full overview. Dropping a folder on the window starts the analysis.

Tests

./run_tests.sh        # or: python3 -m unittest discover -s tests

Engine tests (standard library, no pytest needed) cover focus analysis, long exposure, astro (registration, palettes, binning, calibration), stacker, mosaic, export, parallel helper, module guessing, AI context, i18n completeness (incl. an unwrapped‑string guard) and a GUI smoke test.

License

MIT (see LICENSE). Built only on permissive components: OpenCV, NumPy, rawpy, tifffile, psdtags, PySide6 (LGPL). Astro methods inspired by Siril (re‑implemented, no GPL code copied).