The OMA program was developed by researchers as a way to investigate and post-process photometric images from CCD detectors used for laser-based imaging of reacting and nonreacting flows as well as some spectroscopic applications. Originally written in assembly language on a PDP11 computer, the software has been around since the late 1970s. It has since grown on Classic Mac OS to be a very powerful image processing platform. Additionally, OMA is used in many labs as the front end interface for controlling I/O devices such as cameras, Digital I/O cards and stepper motors. OMA is a powerful control, acquisition and processing system for photometric images. This version is a complete re-write of the original OMA. It is a Cocoa-based application that introduces a C++ image class, which allows easier implementation of new commands. OMA2 runs in 64-bit mode, which provides performance enhancements. The current version doesn't have all of the commands of the old OMA, but more are being ported all the time.

OMA was sold commercially for while at US$1000 per copy, but in this new initiative both the Application and the Source Code are being released to the research community under the Gnu Public License (GPL). It is hoped that this move will create and foster a community of OMA users who (in finding solutions to their own specific imaging needs) are able to contribute to the development of functionality within OMA. We encourage interested programmers to help implement future development directions and make suggestions.

Recent additions have focused on using OMA for acquiring and processing astrophotography images. Various stacking methods are implemented and the oma2cam version of the code supports ZWO cameras and focusers.