Photoshop

[mick pinner]

what version of photoshop are people using for astro processing and does anyone have a recommended place of purchase (best price).thanks

[Omaroo]

Mick - I use Photoshop as part of CS2 in a professional capacity, and as such can justify the expense. We run about 15 copies of the software at work and home.

Have you had a look at a near-free alternative that's becoming pretty popular - Pixel Image Editor? It's a German attempt to create a viable alternative, and it's pretty good. It looks, for all intents and purposes, just like Photoshop. Most techniques are similar. I have it installed and find it more than comparable to PS in most respects. I still use Photoshop when pre-press work needs to be done to CMYK colour files, but Pixel for nearly everything else. No reason for it other than it's a little less bloated.

You can try it out for free at http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=12 and if you like it, the un-locked version is only US$32.

Cheers
Chris

[mick pinner]

thanks Chris.

[Geoff45]

If you are a registered student/teacher/academic you can get a huge discount by buying the education version. This is no different to the usual version, but there are restrictions eg you can't use it commercially.

[Doug]

G'day all,
actually you do not need to be a 'registered student' to purchase the academic edition of PS CS2. I purchased my copy over the counter for around $525 no questions asked.
I had trouble with the student thing and was looking at enrolling in a course, but the salesman just said take it to the checkout and don't worry about it.
This is not to say that the freebe pixel program is not worth it, just don't be put off by academic issues (we are all students), and reading the packge restrictions, there is no fraud involved so long as the s/w is not used for comercial interest.

Cheers,
Doug

[Octane]

Mick,

If you can't afford Photoshop, another alternative, and quite possibly the best I've seen to date, is, The GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program), found at www.gimp.org (http://www.gimp.org).

It was initially created for UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems, such as Linux and FreeBSD. It did so well that it's been ported to the Windows platform. Click on the Gimp for Windows link in the menu on the left-hand side.

It's pretty much a Photoshop clone *hides from those who swear it isn't*, but, for free.

I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS2 for all my astrophotography editing.

I hope that helps you out.

Regards,
Humayun