ILP - Images List to Process
V1.0

The ILP - “Images List to Process” standard is defined to be in help for users of data acquisition and data processing applications when there are big numbers of files separated in different folders. The ILP is similar to the popular M3U play lists and contains a list of file names, in this case image files.

Supporting ILP in a processing application should be fairly simple as it doesn't require a special user interface. Adding *.ilp in the filter of the Windows' standard file selection dialog box, makes it easy for the users to select lists. After that, the processing application should read the file to find the list of the files that the user wants to process. There is no need for the user to navigate through multiple folders and select multiple files.

There is more work for the data acquisition and data indexing applications to generate such files, but they also have more control on the data file creation.

List of applications that can build ILP files:
APT - Astro Photography Tool, 4.61 and newer

List of applications that can use ILP files:
Astroart, v9.0 SP1 and newer

Both lists are ordered by the implementation date of the ILP support.

Definition of ILP - Images List to Process standard:

#ILP version xxx
#Filter name
Full path file name with extension
Full path file name with extension
#Light|#DarkFrame|#FlatField|#FlatFieldDarkFrame|#Bias
Full path file name with extension
Full path file name with extension

All the "#" keywords are optional. If there are no keywords to define the images type, all files will be considered as lights. If there is type keyword it is active till the next type keyword.

Example:

#ILP version 1.0
#Filter Ha
c:\astro_images_source\CameraCCD_1\2025\M1\Image01.fits
c:\astro_images_source\CameraCCD_1\2025\M1\Image02.xsif
c:\astro_images_source\CameraCCD_1\2025\M1\Image03.cr2
#Filter OIII
c:\astro_images_source\CameraCCD_1\2025\M1\Image04.nef
c:\astro_images_source\CameraCCD_1\2025\M1\Image05.tiff
c:\astro_images_source\CameraCCD_1\2025\M1\Image06.png
#DarkFrame
c:\astro_images_source\CameraCCD_1\2025\M1\Image07.fits
c:\astro_images_source\CameraCCD_1\2025\M1\Image08.xsif
c:\astro_images_source\CameraCCD_1\2025\M1\Image09.cr2

The first version of the ILP standard was defined in January 2025, in a discussion between Ivaylo Stoynov, Fabio Cavicchio, Han Kleijn, Mabula Haverkamp and Cyril Richard.

ILP - Images List to ProcessV1.0

Astro Photography Tool

APT friends:

ILP - Images List to Process
V1.0