Astra 4

[Stub Mandrel]

Someone pointed me at 'Astra' and I managed to download version 3 as a freebie shortly before it was removed from their website.

It had extras, like Lucy-Richardson deconvolution that aren't in the cheap version of Astra 4.

Anyway I went back for another look and tried the demo version, which did some ace things to a couple of test pictures.

Either the price has dropped or I misread it before, as it now seems to be quite good buy - about £20 for the full version. I took the plunge.

The 'multi-scale contrast' seems to pull out detail almost as well as deconvolution or wavelets on some images - without being as prone to ringing. It's done a great job on some of my jupiter shots from last spring, pulling out some finer storm detail without exaggerating the colours of the bands.

Here's an example where three small storms trailing after the red spot appeared when I tweaked up the mid-range contrast:

Before:

After:

[Pompey Monkey]

Very good - the "PL" is certainly living up to it's name here