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Old 28-08-2009, 07:57 AM
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jakob
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Port Macquarie NSW Australia
Posts: 587
Quote:
Originally Posted by Octane View Post
Jakob,

IRIS is, apart from everything bojan mentioned, a pre-processing tool.

There are certain things that Photoshop is best used for, such as masking (yes, I know IRIS can do this, but, it is not exactly what you call easy), and feathering selections which is very important if you don't want an effect to span the entire image.

Apart from all the pre-processing of images, I use IRIS to set my black point and RGB balance. Oftentimes, it still needs to be tweaked in Photoshop. In fact, sometimes I don't even bother with doing that in IRIS, I do it all in Photoshop.

Then, all my post-processing is done in Photoshop: levels, curves, saturation, colour balance, blurring, sharpening, et. al.

The GIMP, whilst good, is useless for us as it won't process 16-bit images. And, we all know that there is a lot of dynamic range in our astrophotographs. You could quite easily get away with editing family happy snaps in The GIMP. It just isn't suited to astrophotography (or, in my case, landscape work).

Regards,
Humayun
Humayun,

Thank you for the detailed explanation, I have a long way to go!

I just started to play with Iris, but I think PS is the way to go.
I'm just checking if as a member of Computer Pals College I can get the student version ($192).

J.
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