Aperture for image processing?

[szymon]

Does anyone out there use aperture for processing their astro images? I use it for almost all the processing I do on my terrestrial photography so I'm very used to it. It has a lot more functionality than people realise, it's much more than eg. Lightroom (although it often gets dismissed as being equivalent) and I'm wondering whether I really need to go out and learn photoshop or gimp. What are the killer features that PS has for astro?

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[Alien 13]

For me the key useful features of PS in no particular order are.

Adjustment layres

Layre masks

Channels

Selections

and the standard stuff

Levels

Curves

Unsharp mask

gaussian blur

Alan

[swag72]

I could not live without Layer masks, layers and the selective colour tool in PS. 

My opinion is not to be influenced by what others think. There's a tendency to feel that you need certain processing software without ever realising how your current one works. I would not be able to use anything that doesn't have the above (apart from the usual curves, levels etc) - I would say that if you know your way around the software that's half the battle won. Give it a go and see how you feel - Don't just change your software because everyone extols the virtues of something else

[szymon]

Aperture can do layers, can use masks to selectively modify colours, can brush various adjustments in where needed, and in general is a pretty powerful editor.  I think I'll stick with it for now until I realise that I need something "more powerful".  Mind you, I've not yet worked with stacked images, so I'll probably realise for myself eventually that I need something else!  Would be great to know if there is anyone out there who is working with Aperture for astro though...

[ollypenrice]

It sounds as if it should do the job. I also use Pixinsight and could not live without Dynamic (or Automatic) background extraction or SCNR Green, though there is also Hasta La Vista Green for Ps. I don't know if there is a standalone.

The hard stretch given to astro images does introduce gradients which need careful attention and purpose made tools are the best.

Olly