Orion Nebula and lots of dust

[Fay]

Really lovely Mark, yes such a lot of dust!

what version of PS do you get for £10 a month?

[Carole]

I had forgotten that you never had a full version of Photoshop Mark, I think you used to use Photoshop elements. 

What is ACR I haven't come across it, unless it is only in the more recent versions of Photoshop.
Also what did you do to retain the star colour, something I struggle with.

Fabulous image Mark.

Carole

[JohnP]

Adobe Camera Raw... Lets you edit Raw files directly before opening in PS...

quote.... Adobe Camera Raw, which lets you import and enhance raw images, has been a must-have tool for professional photographers right since it was first released in 2003. Applications that support Adobe Camera Raw include Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, After Effects, and Bridge. Additionally, Adobe Lightroom is built upon the same powerful raw image processing technology that powers Adobe Camera Raw.

[RobertM]

That's also a great image, the PS'd version seems to have more definition and show fainter stars; is that the processing in PS giving you extra control ?

Must admit looking at PS myself for NB combination only a couple of weeks ago as its a bit fiddly in PI.

Robert

[MarkS]

Really lovely Mark, yes such a lot of dust!

what version of PS do you get for £10 a month?

Photoshop Creative Cloud

I had forgotten that you never had a full version of Photoshop Mark, I think you used to use Photoshop elements. 

What is ACR I haven't come across it, unless it is only in the more recent versions of Photoshop.
Also what did you do to retain the star colour, something I struggle with.

Fabulous image Mark.

Carole

With Photoshop CC (and some other versions), if you open a raw file e.g. a CR2 file from Photoshop then it takes you into ACR to perform the raw conversion first.  But with Photoshop CC you can then go back into ACR to use the various sliders e.g. noise control that it provides.

Star colour is all about how you perform the main initial stretch.  If you use Photoshop curves to stretch your linear data you'll end up washing the colours out of the stars.  It's worth learning enough of IRIS to perform an arcsinh stretch. You just need to open your 16bit TIFF, stretch it and save it back.  Then open in Photoshop for the rest of whatever you do.

That's also a great image, the PS'd version seems to have more definition and show fainter stars; is that the processing in PS giving you extra control ?

Must admit looking at PS myself for NB combination only a couple of weeks ago as its a bit fiddly in PI.

I performed some deconvolution (which increased noise) then loaded it in Photoshop for final tweaking of the stretch and for noise reduction.  The deconvolution brought out the fainter stars.

[MarkS]

More on star colour (for Carole) ...

The main problem for astro-data is that it has a very high dynamic range - effectively it is HDR (high dynamic range) data rather than a photo of the children and the dog playing in the woods.  Photoshop is excellent for tweaking photos of the children and the dog playing in the woods.  But for astro data you really need Photoshop's HDR tool suite.  So try Image|Adjustments|HDRToning - this allows you to stretch the data without losing star colour.  Not many folk know this 

Quick tip - make sure you've carefully subtracted the light pollution background level and white balanced before you do the HDR Toning.  The  HDR Toning will automatically flatten the image (i.e. it will apply the previous adjustment layers) before it can proceed.

Mark

[Carole]

Image|Adjustments|HDRToning

I don't have this in CS3.

Carole

[MarkS]

Image|Adjustments|HDRToning

I don't have this in CS3.

IRIS it is then!

[Carole]

IRIS it is then!

I have installed it again but don;t have a clue what to do.

Carole

[MarkS]

IRIS it is then!

I have installed it again but don;t have a clue what to do.

Carole

Here's a quick tutorial:
http://forum.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/index.php?topic=10675

[Fay]

Do you get Lightroom and Camera raw as well for that price? i thought it looked more like £17

[Fay]

I wonder what CC has that CS5 does not.

[MarkS]

Do you get Lightroom and Camera raw as well for that price? i thought it looked more like £17

I'm on the Photoshop/Camera Raw/Lightroom package for £8.57/month.
http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/photoshop-lightroom.html

I'm quite interested in trying out the techniques here:
http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/astrophotography.image.processing2/

It has raised lots of controversy on the DPReview forum but the more I look at the maths behind it, the more I'm convinced Roger Clark is actually correct.

Mark

[RobertM]

Thanks for pointing that out Mark, it was a useful read; I think Don Goldman (astrodon) uses similar techniques.  I also think Adobe lens correction would be of great benefit and likely more useable than PI DBE.

Robert

[MarkS]

Thanks for pointing that out Mark, it was a useful read; I think Don Goldman (astrodon) uses similar techniques.  I also think Adobe lens correction would be of great benefit and likely more useable than PI DBE.

Robert

The main problem is that you can't apply flat frames.  So although it might work quite well for cameras with lenses, I wouldn't be able to use it for images from my scope - the flat frame is too complex.

Mark