Astrophotography and ImagesPlus

[Trik]

Although I rarely take shots of the moon or night sky, I like looking at this forum as the pictures are so beautiful.

During my searches for different sharpening techniques, I came across an app called ImagesPlus by Mike Unsold. It looks as though it has been written almost specifically for star shots, but I did a search of all the forums here at Canon DP, and no one else has ever mentioned it. Has anyone tried this app for astrophotography?

Trik

[Adrena1in]

Never heard of it, but tell us more...sounds interesting...

[timeasterday]

ImagesPlus is my main software for processing astrophotos. It makes it very easy to process all the light frames, dark frames, flat frames, and bias frames. It does a lot more than that and I am still trying to learn all it can do.

[Dusty]

Yes indeed, Images Plus is a must have if you are thinking of getting into serious astrophotography.
It will do a whole host of functions, including calibrating raw files in order for them to be stacked.
Resize frames so that they match up and of course colour correction and a whole host of other functions, too many to list here.
BTW it also includes the ability to control your camera and assist in finding perfect focus.
Quite an advanced piece of software.

Here's the link: http://www.mlunsold.com/

:D

[Trik]

Although I have only used the Adaptive Richardson-Lucy algorithm for sharpening fur or feathers, from what I could see, you can select a star, for example, and use that as a "master" to apply to the rest of the shot - possibly. But I don`t know much about it, and, at $209, it was too expensive for me to buy only to use as a sharpening tool. Just thought it might be useful to you astrophotographers.

Trik

[Adrena1in]

Thanks for the info, once I start getting better images I might consider buying this.

[Trik]

ImagesPlus is my main software for processing astrophotos. <snip>
Yes indeed, Images Plus is a must have if you are thinking of getting into serious astrophotography. <snip>

Any chance of some before-and-after shots, guys?

Trik

[Nightop]

I too can endorse IP, it is a great program with good to execellent support in the Yahoo group about it. Another program to try is Nebulosity by Craig Stark. The learning curve in Nebulosity is less steep than IP, but IP has a more robust set of features, and is aimed directly at the DSLR crowd where as Nebulosity is aimed at a more general population.

I have and use both programs (and several others) but Nebulosity is currently my program of choice for capture and initial processing.