---
title: Image Analysis Tools Overview
description: "Astro PM’s analysis suite is four tools that share one goal: know exactly what you captured, keep only what deserves stacking, and understand what your optics are telling you. ### The Four Tools | Tool | Job | | ---…"
url: "https://astro-pm.com/docs/sub-inspector-image-analysis/"
updated: "2026-07-12"
category: "Astro PM App Guide / Analysis Tools & Calculators"
---

# Image Analysis Tools Overview

Astro PM’s analysis suite is four tools that share one goal: know exactly what you captured, keep only what deserves stacking, and understand what your optics are telling you.

### The Four Tools

| Tool | Job |
| --- | --- |
| [**Sub Inspector**](/docs/sub-inspector-grading/) | Batch review: load a whole folder of subs, measure them all, grade with adjustable thresholds, and reject the bad ones safely. |
| [**Image Analysis**](/docs/image-analysis-diagnostics/) | Deep single-image diagnostics: star quality, focus-plane tilt, collimation, vignetting, dust and reflections, PSF profiling, exposure evaluation. |
| [**Image Annotator**](/docs/image-annotator/) | Plate solve any image and overlay astronomical catalogs – identify everything in the frame, annotate, and export. |
| **Multi-Image Analysis** | In beta: the 3D focus-curve system – load subs across focuser positions to visualize the focus surface. |

### How Analysis Closes the Planning Loop

Rejections in Sub Inspector are recorded against the matching project (files are matched to exposure lines via their FITS headers – filter, exposure time, and folder), so **accepted counts** drive project progress. The scheduler plans future nights against accepted totals: a night lost to cloud is automatically re-planned, because the ledger says the subs did not survive review.

### Supported Files

All tools read **FITS** (.fits, .fit, .fts) and **XISF**; the single-image tools also open TIFF. Metadata comes straight from the headers: filter, exposure, date, gain/offset, binning, temperature, focal length, pixel size, airmass, and plate-solve WCS when present.