Processing Software

[mick pinner]

thanks Jase l think you summed it up well.

[bojan]

The problem with us humans is, we almost always make our decisions based on first impressions (and I am the same of course), and choosing the image processing software is not an exception.
Second look (and getting to know the tool) is usually omitted because we get used to the first choice, especially if our expectations are sort of fulfilled. The manufacturers of commercial products know this very well and they are tailoring them accordingly, paying attention to MMI (Man-Machine Interface), which apparently is more important that the job the application is supposed to do. And it is absolutely amazing how many people are actually prepared to pay good money in good fate that they will get an exceptional and exclusive product because it is expensive. What they are getting is just a nice wraps, everything else was already in public domain and therefore, free !
Saying there is no "One size fits all" is very often just an excuse for not taking action and just sticking to known path..
Proper understanding of the application, on the other hand, is essential.

Recently I started to look at ImageJ (it is also freeware and open source, java application) and it looks very promising, definitely an alternative for often too expensive commercial packages. And it does handle 16bits/channel TIFF format, as well as RAW (*.CR2)
http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/

[troypiggo (Troy)]

I recently downloaded ImageJ too - turned it up searching for deconvolution software. It has heaps of plugins, and it seems the authors are very active based on the traffic on their mailing list. Mostly academic applications I think. Looks like it does focus stacking too, which is handy for macro photography. Yet to get my teeth really stuck into it.

[drjcaron (Jim Caron)]

Hi All,
This is my first post to this forum, and I am a vendor, so I will try to be careful with my choice of words. Much of my day job involves processing images of different types. I use at least five programs, some that are free, some are not. What I really like about ImageJ is that you can scroll through a lot of images very quickly. It saves me a lot time hunting down problems in image sequences. If it was a paid program, I'd buy it.

What I appreciate about the commercial software, beyond the user interface, is that there is someone is accountable for the content (or at least should be). I can fire off an email asking "why does it do that" or "why doesn't it do that" and expect an answer. For this reason, I expect that commercial will usually be better than free software. It is of course up to the user to decide whether the cost is worth it. It is perfectly understandable for a user to save his money for a bigger telescope.

Best Regards,
Jim C

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Well, decovolution is by far most usefull filter I had used in processing images, heres one im going to have to try http://www.quarktet.com/ .

What do you think of CCDstacks (paid for) algorithm Jim .