One of MakeProfile's functions is the flat (code 4) profile. By default, it will distribute the full magnitude of the profile uniformly over every pixel. Using options like `--setconsttonan', `--setconsttomin', its possible to use this kind of profile for other purposes, for example to mask a given region.

One very useful application of the flat profile function is that all the pixels associated with a given circular/elliptical region have a fixed value (different from other profiles). The main purpose of doing something like this would be to use the output as an object region in MakeCatalogs to do aperture photometry after running NoiseChisel on the image (instead of using NoiseChisel's object regions). However, NoiseChisel's Sky and Sky standard deviation values can be very useful in aperture photometry.

With the current facilities in Makeprofiles doing this is not impossible: suppose you want one set of pixels within a given ellipse to have the value of 128. Let's say the area of the elliptical region you have in mind is N pixels. Given a zeropoint, you can then find the magnitude for a total flux of N*128. This can be done in a script, but it is not easy to carry, or write that script every time you need it. Since aperture photometry is a common process in astronomy, it justifies one extra options in MakeProfiles.

So the suggested process would go like this: if the user specifies an ID column, then it is assumed that the value of the ID column is the fixed value assumed for the profile (has to be an integer). It is then possible to do take the steps explained above at the start of MakeProfiles and let the existing tools do the job, but I am affraid that all the mathematical operations that are necessary and the floating point errors might give final values of 148.99999999 instead of 149. So when run in this mode, we will have to put a rounding function. This will all be expensive. So at this stage, I think its easier to just put a condition in the profile builder and use this fixed value instead of the calculated magnitude value (similar to the options mentioned at first).

It might also be possible to set the output's type to 'long' (instead of float) to make it even faster. But if it will cause complication in the code (making the code too hard to read), there is no problem with a float format, MakeCatalog will convert all pixel map data into long internally before using them as long.