SAOImageDS9/SAOImageDS9: v8.8b2

Highlights

• Multicolor frames: Combine more than three images in one frame using an arbitrary number of color layers. Each layer can have its own color, transparency, order, and blend mode.
• Per-frame colorbars: Each frame now controls its own colorbar visibility, position, label placement, foreground/background colors, width, and other display settings. Colorbars can be placed on any side of the image, including the top or left.
• Bookmarks: Save and return to locations in an image, including the zoom, rotation, orientation, and data-cube slice.
• Live region statistics: Analysis → Make Catalog measures supported regions in the current frame and displays the results in a live Catalog Tool table.
• Region pixel masks: save pixmask writes a FITS image in which pixels inside regions are labeled with the corresponding region ID.
• 3D Surface region analysis: View the pixel values inside a 2D region as an automatically updated 3D data cube.
• New 3D ray tracing: FIP (First Intensity Point) rendering displays the first finite, non-zero voxel along each ray and can add basic shading and lighting.
• Virtual Observatory image search: Analysis → Archives → Search SIA Registry finds Simple Image Access (SIA) services in a VO registry.
• CIAO/FITS composite-region logic: DS9 now preserves explicit intersection and union logic in composite regions and can show hatching to visualize the selected area. This changes previous behavior.
• Reveal frames: A new display mode that overlays two frames and wipes between them with a draggable slider, for comparing two images of the same field.
• Interface improvements: Adjustable panner and magnifier sizes, faster panning with Shift+Arrow, editable polygon vertices, new dash-list controls, and full-screen shortcuts.
• Platform updates: XPA is enabled by default on Windows; macOS builds are universal binaries for macOS 12+; Linux is also available as a Flatpak.