Which post processing program?

[rfdesigner]

Hi

I've been using IRIS quite happily as it

A: is free

B: is powerful

C: can be command line driven, meaning I'm never left hunting though someone elses good idea of a menu order when trying to find a command.

D: will run scripts.

However one thing it can't do very effectively is remove stars. So when I process they tend to bloat giving my images a very amateurish look.

So, first question

Is there is free program that will remove stars?.. and work in at least 16 bits/colour

Second question

If there isn't a freebee, what is the best bang/buck?

I'm aware of the following

Pixinsight

AstroArt

Nebulosity

Photshop

I know Photoshop is regarded my some as the best, but I just don't like paying £600 for software that could well not work or only very slowly in a virtual machine in a few years time when M$ change the rules (again).. that's a road I've trodden far too often.

Pixinsight looks a possible, but looks like a long learning curve.. are there any opinions here (where people haven't self selected, unlike the Pixinsight forums)

I've tried the AstroArt demo and it seems to work, but I'm no expert..

I don't think Nebulosity can remove stars.. I have the latest demo on my machine and it doesn't seem to do as much processing as IRIS does.

thanks in advance

Derek

[r3i]

Older (and most importantly legal) versions of PS occasionally come up for sale on places like Amazon now and again. I got a full copy of CS3 for around £100 from Amazon a year or so ago. However you still have to be careful - there have been examples of illegal copies being sold through Amazon see this thread: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/84537-photoshop-cs4-extended-99-from-amazon/page__hl__%20photoshop%20%20£99%20%20amazon

[johnrt]

You could try Gimp which is free and quite powerful. However I think you'll find most people use Photoshop in one guise or another. I use a mixture of Pixinsight and CS5. Pixinsight is an awesome bit of kit, if not a little daunting to begin with. But luckily there are some great tutorial vids available from Harry http://www.harrysastroshed.com/tutorialhome.html

[Bizibilder]

Photoshop is most folks favourite - I've PM'd you with details of a perfectly legal way to buy PS for considerably less than the full price.

[Freddie]

If you've got kids, a student copy of PS (full version, lower cost) is a good way to go.

[rfdesigner]

You could try Gimp which is free and quite powerful. However I think you'll find most people use Photoshop in one guise or another. I use a mixture of Pixinsight and CS5. Pixinsight is an awesome bit of kit, if not a little daunting to begin with. But luckily there are some great tutorial vids available from Harry http://www.harrysast...torialhome.html

I'd previously rejected Gimp as it used to be 8bit only.

But it looks like 2.8 is 16/32 bit compatable.. maybe I'll take a peek

thanks

Derek

[NickK]

PixInsight will handle large images too - current image I'm processing is 6.7GB (gigabytes). Originally I got this to handle the 17MB 383L images.

[steppenwolf]

You should include MaxIm DL in your list too as it is a very feature rich package that does so much more than just images processing but it isn't cheap - quality never is! An earlier (legal) version of PhotoShop (I bought CS3 for £120 from Amazon a while back) would be your best bet as it has amazing power to process your data, works in true 16bit and has attracted the attention of many third party plugin writers - I'd get this even before Maxim DL.

[pete_l]

I know Photoshop is regarded my some as the best, but I just don't like paying £600 for software that could well not work or only very slowly in a virtual machine in a few years time when M$ change the rules (again).. that's a road I've trodden far too often.

I regularly use CS3 in an XP VM hosted on my Ubuntu/Virtualbox system. It works transparently - as if the XP instance was running native.

[rfdesigner]

I regularly use CS3 in an XP VM hosted on my Ubuntu/Virtualbox system. It works transparently - as if the XP instance was running native.

How much effort was require to get this working. For someone who's technically competant but has no real interest in IT.. just wants a tool that works.

Derek

[pete_l]

For virtualbox, it doesn't take much to get it going - though you will need a fair bit of disk space for all the virtualised environments you set up.

The steps go something like this (it's been a while since I set it up, IIRC it "just worked" so I didn't really pay it much attention).

Download / install the latest VB instance fro your computers host operating system (i.e. if your PC runs Windows 7, get the Windows version - either 32 or 64 bit. You match the VB version to your host's O/S - not to the guest O/S).

Also download the Guest additions for that version of VB. There's only 1 Guest adisiotns across all operating systems, but it does need to be in sync with the version of VB you're installing. So if you download VB version 4.1.8, get the 4.1.8 Guest Additions, too.

Get the installation disk for whichever OS you want to install and are legally entitled to install. Linux distros are good for this as they are unencumbered / free and you can download a CD image (an ISO file, typically called something.iso)

Start the VirtualBox Manager programme, click on "New" to open the New VM Wizard. Make decisions on how much disk space you wish to allocate (e.g. 20 GB - that's what I mean by "takes up a lot of disk space" ), the amount your PC's memory to give the VM (1GB is a good place to start) and the amount of video RAM to allocate (I generally start with 32MB - you won't be running Crysis 3 in a VM)

Then tell the wizard which drive (or ISO file) contains the O/S you have chosen to virtualise and let it start.

Once the O/S has installed, you essentially have a fresh PC running your Linux or (legal) Windows. There won't be any apps installed.

The next step is to install the Gust Additions in your bare O/S. These are addons that speed up the graphics, fly the USB ports (you can assign USB devices to talk directly to your guest O/S. So if you have a printer or camera, that can be accessed directly by the programs running on your guest).

After that, there will be a solid hour or two to install all the applications you want to run on your VM. Be aware that the "disk" you specified when you created the VM is all the space the VM will have. YOU can share disks / directories between your host and guest, but that's getting advanced.