Minimizing upload times and volume

Image files contain a lot of "empty" data that is costly to move up and down the Internet, especially for folks not blessed with high speed connections and large data quotas. Tools like Source Extractor are available that will extract all the star-like objects in an image with their fluxes, x-y positions (and RA-Dec positions if WCS data is available) and put them in a nice tabular form that is MUCH smaller than the raw images. My guess is that this is one of the first actions VPHOT takes to process our images. SO, can an interface be made available whereby we can do the preliminary processing locally to create the tabular data that can be uploaded at much lower cost? The tabular data can be encased in a FITS file with all the same header info as comes with the images.

I would be happy to be a beta tester and to write up a paper to help others take advantage of the feature. Just give me a specification for the data file.