Astronomy Tools Action Set by ProDigital Software

[theodoros1978]

Hi, am considering buying this software from the following link Astronomy Tools Action Set by ProDigital Software

any of you have the tools, are they any good? can you show me an example from your work? or maybe you can take this image of mine and tweak it with these tools and repost?

thank you

[AndyUK]

Hi Theodorus - I bought these actions about 18 months ago when first starting out on this imaging lark - They're affectionately known as "Noel's actions" (and I suspect more than a few people on SGL have purchased them!).

Although I didn't use some of them at all, I found those that I did use worked very well indeed (and certainly made life a lot easier at the time). I will admit though that I don't use them now as much as I used to - Now that I've learnt a little more about post processing, there are some actions I prefer to have a little more control over rather than just pressing the button, but for the price I'd say they're very good value indeed.

Sadly I can't show you the results of only using Noel's actions on any of my images as I reprocessed all the better ones when I started learning "new tricks". The image you've posted is extremely small (19Kb) and therefore it can't be stretched that much, which you really need to do before starting to look at using any of the actions - If you have a larger / better quality version, I'll quite happily have a go...

[blinky]

Yep, I have Noels Actions, very good, especially if you are a beginer. As you go on, you will likely learn a few ways of your own but they are pretty usefull, especially for the money.

[theodoros1978]

Thank you Andy, am at work right now, when home i will sent you an image as it came from dslr, untouched.

blinky you have a very nice blog and am really jealous of it!

thank you guys

[ollypenrice]

As above, well worth having. Some are too harsh but you just choose to place them as a layer on top or underneath and vary the opacity to reduce the effect and/or choose it for different parts of the image. You will tend to use them less as your knowledge grows but some are a constant pleasure. Eg selecting stars can be done longhand following MartinB's excellent SGL turorial, but Noel saves you an age. They are well done and a bargain.

Olly

[Psychobilly]

Got to agree with The other posters .. well worth the money especailly when your starting out...

Noel's pretty good at responding to any to questions via e-mail as well...

Peter...

[JoLo]

Yeah, another vote for NC actions here.... Lifesavers when you start out, timesavers as you get better with processing. I too don't use them as much as i did, but there are a few i still use routinely, or in combination with other processing I do (Make Stars Smaller, Enhance Star Color, Enhance DSO....).

I have also found some other interesting single actions in surfing the web, usually free, keep an eye out for them. I have one that is used to enhance dust lanes in galaxies...it doesn't get me all the way there, but it is a good basis on which to add.

[PaulB]

I think that it's about time I brought myself the latest version.

I've been thinking about it for a while now. And I am very familiar with them.

A friend of mine has them, and I have used them to good effect.

I didn't realise, until this am. How cheap they were. So this week-end. I will be making a purchase, and down-loading them, to use with CS2.

Which I assume they will work with.