In 1997 processing raw FITS images required software packages specifically written for the task.
I wanted to process FITS images with Photoshop, but there was no way to load them. After satisfying myself that no plugin existed on the planet, I wrote FITSPlug, a Photoshop FITS Plugin that presently supports every known version of Photoshop for Windows.
After accumulating thousands of FITS images, I realised a need to organise, view, search and at times update the metadata in them. All of the tools existed in Windows, but not for FITS images. So FITS4Win was born. Today, FITS4Win2 has evolved into a set of Windows shell extensions that integrate FITS into Windows as a standard image type, like JPG or TIFF.