PS Elements website for astro image processing

[bloodhound31]

Hi all.

Hopefully this may help lots of people....

It has come to my attention that $1000 Australian is a bit pricey for most of us to go out and buy a brand new full-version of Photoshop.

Most of us have to be content that we can only afford Elements.

I run elements 4 and although I am still a learner, I believe that this should be ample to do what we need to do to our astrophotos for brilliant results.

My only problem is, is there anyone out there who has paved the way and can provide a good step by step, using Elements?

Most times I get constructive feedback, it is great, but sometimes it is assumed that the buttons and commands available on elements are the same which they are not.

Does anyone know of any appropriate websites or links that address this? If we have any good and experienced processors out there, would they be willing to create some webpages or tutorials with lots of screen-shots?

I would be more than willing to work online with such a person to develop this, so please, feel free to take me up on it is you want to do something like that.

Baz.

[renormalised]

I'm lucky, as I can get PS CS4 for academic pricing, about $240:)

However, my brother runs PS Elements on his laptop and I've used it a couple of times. I don't know how good it'd be for the type of processing we do, as many of the functions that you'd normally expect in PS are automated and some have been combined to do a raft of jobs simultaneously. I suppose you could give it a try, though. Two other good programs to use are PaintShop Pro and The GIMP. PSP will set you back about $200, The GIMP is free. They're both very powerful programs and can do pretty much all of what you can do with PS.

I do most of my processing on my Mac with The GIMP, but I'm thinking of getting CS4 as well. Use them a complimentary programs.

[Omaroo]

I agree. The GIMP has FAR more power and flexibility than Elements, which is horribly knobbled. I've installed GIMP v2.6.1 a while ago and it is really quite a comprehensive package. Incredible that it is free.

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gimp-2.6.4-i686-setup.exe

Give it a go Barry - I think you'll be better off doing a project based on this than Elemental... sorry... Elements.

[bloodhound31]

Thanks very much RN and Chris. Anything free is worth a look, so I will look at GIMP. Although I still think it would be a good idea for someone to build a step by step elements page for those who went out and paid for it.

Cheers,

Baz.

[troypiggo]

I came across some GIMP plugins that are for astro processing:
http://www.hennigbuam.de/georg/gimp.html

I have yet to actually use them, despite downloading and installing them some time ago. Seem to remember there being a documentation issue, perhaps I was too lazy to look hard enough at the time.

Pretty sure they're being maintained pretty regularly.

I will get back to it some time soon to learn how to use them.

[Omaroo]

Absolutely. They are quite useful too. There are more and more coming from all sorts of people.