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****************************
What's New in Photutils 1.7?
****************************

Here we highlight some of the new functionality of the 1.7 release. In
addition to these major changes, Photutils 1.7 includes a large number
of smaller improvements and bug fixes, which are described in the full
:ref:`changelog`.


New Profiles Subpackage
=======================

A new :ref:`profile subpackage <profiles>` was added containing tools
for computing radial profiles and curves of growth:

  *  `~photutils.profiles.RadialProfile`
  *  `~photutils.profiles.CurveOfGrowth`


Converting ``SegmentationImage`` segments to polygons
=====================================================

The ``SegmentationImage`` class now has a ``polygons`` attribute, which
returns a list of `Shapely`_ polygons representing each source segment.
It also now has a ``to_patches`` and a ``plot_patches`` method, which
returns or plots, respectively, a list of `matplotlib.patches.Polygon`
objects. These features require that both the `Rasterio`_ and `Shapely`_
optional dependencies are installed.


``ApertureStats`` local background
==================================

The `~photutils.aperture.ApertureStats` ``local_bkg`` keyword can now
be input as a scalar value, which will be broadcast for apertures
with multiple positions. This can be useful to avoid loading large
memory-mapped images into memory if the background level is constant.


Performance Improvements
========================

A number of significant performance improvements have been made:

  * :func:`~photutils.aperture.aperture_photometry` and
    :meth:`~photutils.aperture.PixelAperture.do_photometry`
  * :meth:`~photutils.aperture.PixelAperture.area_overlap`
  * :class:`~photutils.psf.GriddedPSFModel`
  * :meth:`~photutils.segmentation.SegmentationImage.make_source_mask`


Other changes
=============

Please see the :ref:`changelog` for the complete list of changes.

.. _Rasterio: https://rasterio.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
.. _Shapely: https://shapely.readthedocs.io/en/stable/