Getting fed up with Photoshop - MaximDL, StarTools et al?

[Fordos Moon]

Afternoon All,

Thinking of investing some money in to some software for image processing as I am getting a bit bored with Photoshop and thinking about buying something "made for the job". I am still using the test version of StarTools which I havent completely figured yet.

I am capturing happily with BackyardEOS and SharpCap so any capturing abilities of the software are not particularly vital. I am using Deep Sky Stacker, Autostakkert etc just fine.

I am imaging DSOs, a few planetary with webcam but mostly nebula and clusters is where I am heading.

Your thoughts would be welcome as always. Cost not as important as Value for Money.

regards

Bob

[swag72]

I'm always quite interested that people think that photoshop isn't made for the job. I find it particularly useful to create a pretty picture, the layers and blending tools are great (no layers in PI ..... yet) and easy to use. Just being able to do something in a different layer and then adjust the opacity to suit is a very intuitive and easy tool I think.

I suppose that the ultra 'tool for the job' processing wise is PixInsight. I find it very useful for a couple of things, but beyond that it has me totally baffled to the extreme. People seem to get good images out of it, but I've either not got the patience to try all of the different permutations or am just lacking in savvy! 

[Fordos Moon]

Swag, I must confess I probably took the "not made for the job" as someone else said it, so happy to withdraw that comment. Maybe I just need to learn how to use it in more depth!

[Jessun]

Pixinsight is great, but it's a bit like buying your first unicorn. Utterly confusing at first, and you'll be clueless what to do with it...

Harry Page has successfully kept a unicorn in his shed for some time now and that's the first source of knowledge.

It is however the natural step after PS.

/Jesper

[Sp@ce_d]

+1 for PoxInsight. Harry's tutorials sold it for me when I trialed it. Found it easier to get along with than PS for a lot of things but still use both sometimes. I had a look at Startools last night.. Interesting but different too

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[IanL]

+1 for Unicorns.  PI is a bit of a mountain to climb, but worth persevering in my view.  In terms of VFM it offers a lot for the price if you have the time and inclination to learn.  For me the best thing is the process-driven approach since you can make (nearly) every step in to an icon as you go and step back to an earlier point in the workflow to change things with much less effort than a PS or similar type package.

The lack of layers is a bit of a drawback; it is easy enough to blend multiple different images using the PixelMath tool (I do it all the time since the HDRMT tool tends to be overly aggressive even at minimum settings, a blend of 25% HDRMT image plus 75% before is great).  It doesn't give you a real-time preview though, so requires trial and error.  I wouldn't hold my breath for layers in PI.  The developers recently stated they are not working on it (after saying they would a while back) since it doesn't give them any USP over PhotoShop or similar.  To be honest I get the feeling it is too hard to implement a real-time layers approach in PI - it's mostly a batch/non-interactive interface and those tools that do offer a real-time preview do it modally (i.e. the preview is locked to one image and tool at a time).

I'm very tempted by StarTools just for the star fixing tools as I have several issues which PI won't really touch; stretched stars in the corners of my frames (bad reducer spacing, holding off buying adaptor to fix it at the moment), plus orange/red haloes around the mid-sized stars which tend to get very ugly when pushing star saturation.  I could probably do something about the latter in PI but the solution isn't leaping out at present.

[glowingturnip]

I use Maxim DL, which is pretty good for some things, but I always find I have to carry the semi-finished photo over to photoshop to finish it off.

Calibration and stacking - I never really get on with the stacking in the free programmes and find I get variable results, good sometimes, shocking at others.  Calibration and stacking in Maxim DL is much better controlled, once you've gone through all the tutorials etc and should always give decent results.  Would like it if it had a registration quality graph like Registax does though, so you can decide which frames to drop, the quality measures in Maxim are a little opaque.  The Color Convert (debayer) for my camera was way off, I eventually had to recalibrate it from a greycard photo. 

Some good tools in Maxim too - deconvolve, digital development processing, wavelets (I find them a little more user friendly than in Registax, and usually use them just for dropping down the basic pixel noise).  The colour balance tools, flatten background/gradient and curves are ok.  Levels are done better in photoshop, I don't get on with Maxim's log scale - I wish the screen stretch window had a mid-point slider too.  There look to be some good LRGB handling tools too, though I don't use those.

However it is seriously lacking in not having layers and blending that photoshop has, and no undo history (apart from the last applied) and all the sharpen/blur tools are a little too blunt, so I always do those bits in photoshop.  It does take some getting used to to be honest, some of the intial screen stretches it gives can be revolting.  The screen magnification controls are a bit clunky, not as good as photoshop's navigator.

I've also had several saving disasters and near-disasters - last was saving a 16-bit stretch in 8-bit format - result, a total wash-out and all my work lost.  Some wysiwyg here, and file recovery is much needed.

Oh, and unless I'm missing something, it doesn't handle avi's.

So overall, it's a good compliment for photoshop, but even though I've splashed out for it, I suspect there are better value-for-money packages out there...

[ollypenrice]

I have learned quite a lot about Photoshop and am very happy with it, partly because I know my way around it tolerably well. Layers are great and erasing/retaining parts of a layer differentially is a fabulous way to work. Ps also provides stunning control over nuances of colour. Photoshop is good for being subtle. The key things to master are layers and the selection tools. It is, essentially, an art programme and since I'm an artist (of sorts) I like it.

Pixinsight has some tremendous tools but is written for those who already know how to use it and the lack of a manual is lunacy. Come on, it just is. It should retain its PhD maths interface for those with maths PhDs but the tools should also have a 'qualitative interface' for those who would prefer it. (This would describe about 95% of PI users, I think.) But PI, ably translated from the original Unicorn by Harry, has tools without which I really would struggle, even from a dark site. With a whiff of LP it has to be PI.

I don't find the processing tools in AA5 at all useful myself and don't use them. I use it for stacking.

Olly

[Gina]

I think I'm getting the hang of Photoshop now and just don't feel like getting to learn yet another complicated piece of software.  What I have is working for me though I still have much to learn in Ps.  I get the feeling that Ps will eventually do all I want once I get more used to using layers.  I need to be able to see what's happening as I go along - I'm fed up with stuff that you start off and then wait a while for the result.

I bought AA5 but without the PhD in maths found it pure fog.  It didn't help that the manual was out of date and didn't match the actual software.  Sometime I want to try it for guiding which I'm told it does well as I'm not entirely happy with PHD.

[RikM]

I use Maxim DL for capture, guiding, calibration and stacking, colour combining the RGB layers, DDP stretching and sometimes deconvolution or wavelets depending on the image. I generally use CCDSharp for deconvolution, and sometime Registar for aligning colour panels or dropping CCD details into DSLR widefiled images. I do all the finishing off with Photoshop and few handy plug-ins. Noel's actions offer some great shortcuts that mostly work very well. I also use a couple of tools that would normally be PixInsight territory: Hasta La Vist Green! and Gradient Xterminator. I have used Photoshop at work for the last 10-12 years maybe more. PS Elements 2 was the one I started with, so having a bit of familiarity with it helps.

[JohnC64]

This is a tricky one,, I have used PS and PI and there are advantages and disadvantages to both of them.  PI has lots of great processes, DBE, SCNR to name but a few, but i find I dont actually understand what some of them do and find the settings that i use are based on the TWHD setting (Thats What Harry Did)  I still prefer to do my stretches in Photoshop (or more often Gimp) as they seem to give more control  and a better live preview.   I salute anyone who has got their head around Star-tools Its one of the few packages out there that i just couldn't get on with,

I think the only way is to give the free trial downloads a go and see what works for you.

Good luck

JOhn

[lensman57]

Afternoon All,

Thinking of investing some money in to some software for image processing as I am getting a bit bored with Photoshop and thinking about buying something "made for the job". I am still using the test version of StarTools which I havent completely figured yet.

I am capturing happily with BackyardEOS and SharpCap so any capturing abilities of the software are not particularly vital. I am using Deep Sky Stacker, Autostakkert etc just fine.

I am imaging DSOs, a few planetary with webcam but mostly nebula and clusters is where I am heading.

Your thoughts would be welcome as always. Cost not as important as Value for Money.

regards

Bob

Hi,

I use StarTools and I really like it, I tried PI and it is good but has a very steep learning curve and is expensive for me atleast. Don't know much about the others though.

Regards,

A.G

[Fordos Moon]

Thanks all for the detailed responses they are much appreciated. Is one version of Photoshop particularly better than another? I currently have CS2 and find the lack of a histogram on the curves tool a little unhelpful?

[RikM]

I have CS3 at home and CS6 at work. I haven't found anything in CS6 that I miss in CS3 for astro.

[orion69]

I use both PI and PS. PI for stacking, stretching individual channels and merging, PS after that. Then back to PI... After that PS again...

There are no rools, depends of object.

[Merlin66]

Hmmm

I'm a happy AstroArt user...it does 99.9% of everything you'll ever need to do.....

[kirkster501]

Another vote for PI.  It is the only piece of software for processing I use for DSO AP.  I use it for everything.  

The pre-processing script is superb.  Just feed it your subs (flats, darks, BIAS and lights) and if you have named them properly in your capture software it goes off and creates masters for LRGB entirely on its own.  Then the LRGB combination tools and the DBE tool.  Then the colour calibration tools.  Then dynamic alignment tool.  Then the noise reduction tool.  Thats where I am so far and it works great - all this stuff is explained in Harrys videos!  I love it and I don't know how to use 95% of the tools!  Its an utterly vast piece of software.  Great value for £150.  It truly is the only piece of software you need after you get your mind round it!

What it really could do with is a software wizard to help people get used to it.

[Komet]

Pixinsight is great, but it's a bit like buying your first unicorn. Utterly confusing at first, and you'll be clueless what to do with it...

What an hilarious statement. Thanks for that! 

Pixinsight is the way to go though. That and CS2 = perfect.

[Ouroboros]

What worries me a little about Photoshop is their proposal to move over to a subscription model, which will not be cheap by all accounts. That might be fine for professionals and heavy users, but it might put off amateur photographers and astrophotographers. That may not worry us if we have already bought the software. But eventually we all have to upgrade computers and with it applications.

The relevance of my point to this thread is that I am keeping an eye out for alternatives. I must say comments about PI have rather put me off. I'm rather hoping that someone will come along and produce a rather more friendly, photoshop-like, version of Photoshop aimed specifically at astro photographers.

Possibly Adobe's move to subscription only access to PS may well be the commercial stimulus for better software for astro photographers

[russellhq]

What about Photoline as an alternative to Photoshop?

I've not heard about it either but there's some interesting discussion over on this thread:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/160093-photoline-or-photoshop/

[ollypenrice]

The problem with Pixinsight (and it applies to some ways of working with Photoshop, too) is that it is mask reliant. To divide up your image into zones in need of different processes you have to create masks and these masks have to be in just the right place, with the right shape and the right feather and opacity. You can only make them using numbers. I find this is like (insert delicate task of your choice  ) while wearing gloves. It drives me nuts.

In Ps I can work in layers without masks by simply making careful use of the eraser and by using the colour select tool.

Olly

[RikM]

I work with the masks in Photoshop, but use them much the same way as erasing unwanted parts off a new layer. I create a duplicate layer, make the adjustment then hide the layer with a mask. By painting on the mask with either white or black, you can then show or hide the precise bits you want. I use a mask because you are not deleting the data as you would when erasing it, simply covering it up.

I like that Photoshop is so flexible that you can use whichever technique suits you best.

[Davey-T]

I use Maxim DL, 

Oh, and unless I'm missing something, it doesn't handle avi's.

There's an option to load AVI  files which loads the seperate frames, which is as far as I've got, haven't tried doing anything with them

Dave

[MonicaA]

What about Photoline as an alternative to Photoshop?

I've not heard about it either but there's some interesting discussion over on this thread:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/160093-photoline-or-photoshop/

I second that, seems like a real and much more affordable alternative (EUR 59 first time buy, EUR 29 upgrade for new "full point" versions, free 30 day trial).       Check out post 5 in that thread.

Monica