Photoshop 7 Elements good for processing?

[msinclairinork]

Hi guys, I have been offered my mates copy of Photoshop 7 Elements. And i was wondering if it was suitable for post processing astro-pics?? Im very new to astropotography (havnt started yet) but im working my was through Steve's book and reasearching as much as possible and also gathering all the necessery equipment too. So as for the softwear, Steve recomends Photoshop but im seeing dozens of different versions of it, and seen as i can get Elements for free i was wondering if it would do the job?

Any advice would be of great help.

Thanks,

Michael

[Digz]

Elements is a stripped out version of full photoshop. It probably has everything most amateurs will need however, having said that I am not sure whether elements 7 has the curves or histogram tools which are going to be beneficial (I know earlier versions didn't)

Despite that, the curves and histogram tools (amongst others) are still there, they are hidden. There are some plugins availabe from the web which allow you to unlock these (for free if I remember rightly) but I cannot recall the name of the site at present.

HTH

[Dave Smith]

Elements already has the Levels tool and the free plugin for Curves can be found here

SmartCurve

Elements 7 can also deal with RAW files.

Dave

[msinclairinork]

Ok thanks for that, i was trying to do one of Steve's tutorials when i got stuck as i cant find 'channels' for the LRGB so i couldnt go any further. Perhaps thats another plugin?

[thesatanbug]

Before you buy any image manipulation software, check out The GIMP.

It does 90% of what photochop does including all the tools you expect from a med/high end application. And is fairly intuitive to use. Comes in all flavaz.

[yesyes]

I've tried GIMP for Windows but it seems it only supports 8 bit per channel. It told me my 16 bit TIFFs had to be converted to 8 bit. Not sure if that's good enough for astro processing... ?!?

[thesatanbug]

Only 8 bit for now. They are working towards 16 bit and beyond but it's not expected until v 2.8

The bit depth only really effects colour separation. You don't lose any detail that you will notice unless you spend half an hour comparing the difference between a 8 and 16 bit image of the same pic. . It only really comes into play at a professional level, and It's is more down to the quality of the screen an image is being displayed on than the image itself. A number of photo professionals are retuning to using crt screens for this reason.

It may iterest you to know, 10% - 15% of all males have colour deficient eyesight. So if affected, any advantage the image/screen quality give is all lost the moment the photons hit your retina. Unless you have had your eyesight tested you wouldn't know the difference anyway.

[Naz]

Elements 7 will only allow certain processes in 16 bit, either it does nought or says it will convert to 8 bit.

Having tried Gimp, I found the workflow awkward after being used to Paint Shop Pro, but as freebee, not bad. After all, PSP started out as freeware.

Archie

[thesatanbug]

^ I'm the same with PS. I find it rather quaint after many years using Gimp.