Image Readers Library

Since the solver itself operates on pixel buffers, it doesn't care what sort of images it is being fed - as long as they all conform to the same 8/16/32 bit pixel buffer format. In real life we however don't store images as raw pixel buffers, and use compressed formats like JPEG. So as a bridge, we need image readers for different image formats that convert the image data into a raw pixel buffer that the solver can use. In order to not have dependencies to any specific image libraries, the WatneyAstrometry.Core library does not include any image reader implementations (with the exception of DefaultFitsReader, which is a minimal implementation with no dependencies)

The WatneyAstrometry.ImageReaders library is a simple additional library that provides implementations for the IImageReader interface. At the time of writing it only contains the CommonFormatsImageReader that can read PNG and JPEG formats with various bit depths and pixel formats. It also acts as an example for custom implementations of image readers.