Anyone use Photoshop Elements?

[Notty]

Hello, over on the Solar forum I'm struggling away with mosaics using the various freeware stitching apps. I also use the free Paint.net app for post processing. Someone has helpfully suggested that PS Elements comes with the photo merging functionality I need, but I was wondering if anyone successfully uses it for all their/most of their post processing at all? I've just started on Deep Sky imaging too. I'm sure if it was that obvious and had all we needed no one would use the full PS but does anyone know how far it does go? I've got deep seated reluctance to go down the software rental model, hence not adopting the full PS but maybe it's inevitable.

Many thanks

[Alien 13]

The problem with PS elements is that although it has a lot of the functionality of PS it is mostly limited to 8 bit processing which could be ok for lunar or planets but not good for deep sky objects.

Alan

[Johanvk]

I used (and for some things still use) PS Elements. However many of the niceties of PS I found on Internet, appeared not to be part of PS Elements. Now I moved to GIMP. Also for money reasons. The 8-bits up to now were not problematic. But: still learning.

[perfrej]

The 8-bit part is a real problem. Suppose you have all your nice data in the lower 30 per cent of the histogram, which apart from bright stars is counting high, you get a total of 77 shades of grey to work with. Stretch that and you have a nice step-gradient grey scale. Not good. 16 bits gives you 19661 shades of grey under the same exposure conditions. I wouldn't even think of using eight bits for anything but a finished JPG file for web publication.
 
20 per cent is counting high. It is more like a few per cent in reality.
 
Below is a 16 bit original sub of NGC6888 taken the other night from Provence. Exposure is 20 minutes (unguided of course). I have taken the raw sub and saved it one 8-bit TIFF and one 16 bit TIFF, then auto-stretched them in PI. This is the reality. 16 bits is cutting it short even. 24 directly from the camera would be nice

The only solution to the problem indicated below, apart from using 16 bits or better, is to expose longer, thus bloating the stars. For every 256-step increase in exposure ADU (assuming a 16 bit CCD, DSLRs are mostly 14 bits) you gain one more shade of grey available for stretch. But he stars will suffer greatly and loose all colour.
 

[Notty]

Thanks for the info everyone. I've decided to go for the full photoshop which seems to be on offer for £7.50 per month at the moment which is reasonable. What swung it was all the tutorials on the web seem to be PS based. My thinking is the concepts are much the same between it and the free versions but 12 months of experience of PS will enable me to transition to the free versions if I don't want to keep paying for it.

[perfrej]

That's a good call! Might as well eliminate all sources of lower quality in the total imaging and processing chain.

/per

[Alien 13]

Thanks for the info everyone. I've decided to go for the full photoshop which seems to be on offer for £7.50 per month at the moment which is reasonable. What swung it was all the tutorials on the web seem to be PS based. My thinking is the concepts are much the same between it and the free versions but 12 months of experience of PS will enable me to transition to the free versions if I don't want to keep paying for it.

Good choice i have been getting offers at the same price that includes PS, Lightroom and cloud.

Alan

[D4N]

GIMP will support high bit depth in 2.10, dunno when that will be released though.

TSED70Q, iOptron Smart EQ pro, ASI-120MM, Finepix S5 pro.

[perfrej]

Unfortunately, GIMP has been advertising 16-bit support for years. Can't trust it anymore.

/per

[D4N]

True enough but I don't like Adobes new pricing scheme.

Assuming 5% price inflation it will have cost £566 after 5 years and if you stop paying you have nothing to show for it.

Pixmania or Acorn seem like better options to me at £21 for a full licence.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Notty]

Fully agree with the sentiment but as a newcomer to graphics software and given the vast wealth of applied AP tutorial resource out there for photoshop, hopefully once I'm up to speed with the concepts they can be transferred over to one of the free packages. I'm assuming adobe aren't going to delete my processed pictures once I stop using it!

[perfrej]

I ireally wish that "Adobe the mud company" would make a Photoshop Elements that is crippled in the right places. Image colour depth is not one of them. Better to remove some of the stuff that really only relates to terrestrial photography and "artistic" work. Dump the entire "path" technology or something.

/per