Introduction to Photoshop for Astroimage Processing - Forums

Topic starter

Mar 10, 2025

My only imaging processing experience, in any domain, is with Pixinsight. I would like to explore Photoshop, not as a replacement for PI but rather as an additional tool. Many of the imagers whose work I admire use both, so with a firm base established in PI it seems a good time to add to the tool kit.

Is there a good book that serves as both an introduction to Photoshop and in particular its use in astroimage processing?

Always happy to watch online tutorials, but as a child of the pre-internet era, I often find myself reaching for a book for the initial introduction to a topic to provide the basic foundation…

Well Written

Wei-Hao Wang

Mar 10, 2025

Great resource here:
https://www.astropix.com/html/books.html

Mark McComiskey

Topic starter

Mar 10, 2025

Thanks! I will definately review that. Look slike a good place to start. A pity there doesn't seem to be a way to get a pdf or paper copy.

Tony Gondola

Frequent contributor

Mar 10, 2025

If you have already purchased Photoshop then disregard. If not, take a look at Affinity Photo. It's as powerful as Photoshop is but you only have to pay for it once and it's yours. You are right in thinking that you need a photo editor to put the final touches on an image. Photoshop, Affinity or even GIMP (free!) will get the job done.

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Mark McComiskey

Topic starter

Mar 10, 2025

Thanks! I will take a look at Affinity.

jkoz9901

Mar 10, 2025

Check out Craig Stocks’ videos on YouTube. Search for Utah Desert Remote Observatory.

I really like his approach

Mark McComiskey

Topic starter

Mar 10, 2025

Will do. Thank you!

John Hayes

Frequent contributor

Mar 11, 2025

Mark,
As you may know, I use PS to "finish" my images after processing them in PI. That last ~5% in PS really makes a huge difference. I've been a PS user for probably 30 years and I don't know where I learned it so I can't even begin to send you to a good reference. What I can do is to provide a short list of things that I find the most valuable to concentrate on as you learn your way around.

1) Filters/Camera Raw Filter. This is a VERY powerful filter that allows adjusting the black point, fiddling with colors and clarity. Some of the capabilities in this filter are very seductive so be careful not to over do it!

2) Adjustments/Shadows/Highlights. This is a very powerful tool for dynamic range control.

3) Pay close attention to how Layer Masking works. This is an extremely powerful tool for adjusting colors, sharpness, NR, etc according to color selection or regions that you want to hand select.

4) Adjust/Color Balance. This is a very effective way to make small adjustments to the color balance according to brightness within an image. I use it all the time to tweak the color balance of the black level. You'll need to learn the color picker to measure your results, but that's trivial.

5) Understand how to duplicate and merge layers. Layers in PS are an extremely important feature.

Those are my 5 most important things to get right in PS. Of course PS is loaded with a lot of more advanced features as well like color range selection, clone stamping, bandwidth sharpening, blurring, etc., but if you just start with these 5 things, they can make an enormous difference in your final results.

BTW, RC-Astro Star-Shrink is a must have for PS users–even with BXT!

One thing that's not great in PS is that you'll have to convert your 32 bit images from PI to 16 bit TIFF images to read them into PS so you lose some bit depth. That's why you want to get things pretty close in PI before finishing in PS.

Good luck with it! PS is a fantastic tool to partner with PI for your processing. PI does a LOT that PS cannot do but PS does a number of things that are 100 times easier than in PI.

John

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Mark McComiskey

Topic starter

Mar 11, 2025

Thanks very much John! I was feeling a bit overwhelmed, and this kind of guide on what to focus on will be immensely helpful.

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Ian McIntyre

Mar 11, 2025

Tony Gondola:
If you have already purchased Photoshop then disregard. If not, take a look at Affinity Photo. It's as powerful as Photoshop is but you only have to pay for it once and it's yours. You are right in thinking that you need a photo editor to put the final touches on an image. Photoshop, Affinity or even GIMP (free!) will get the job done.

Not only is the Affinity base cost cheaper, they very frequently have 50% sales or deals on the entire production suite.

Carastro

Mar 11, 2025 · Edited: Mar 11, 2025

If you decide to go down the Photoshop route, I have a number of tutorials on YouTube.

Many of them are aimed at beginners but you might find a tip or two among them. I am hoping to add another soon but waiting to hear back from some-one who's permission I need as I have taken some of his ideas.

this is a link to my website which has all the links to my tutorials:
https://sites.google.com/view/astrophotography-carole-pope/video-tutorials?authuser=0

None of them are longer than 10 minutes as using free video software which limits the length of recording.

Mark McComiskey

Topic starter

Mar 11, 2025

Thank you. I look forward to viewing these.

Tony Gondola

Frequent contributor

Mar 11, 2025

Ian McIntyre:
Tony Gondola:
If you have already purchased Photoshop then disregard. If not, take a look at Affinity Photo. It's as powerful as Photoshop is but you only have to pay for it once and it's yours. You are right in thinking that you need a photo editor to put the final touches on an image. Photoshop, Affinity or even GIMP (free!) will get the job done.

Not only is the Affinity base cost cheaper, they very frequently have 50% sales or deals on the entire production suite.

Thing is, Photoshop doesn't have a base cost, it's $263.88 US a year and you never own it.

Well Written

Carastro

Mar 11, 2025 · Edited: Mar 11, 2025

I bought my photoshop many years ago before they made it rent only, still have the installation disk. Of course it is not the latest version. but does everything I need.
I think renting it is appalling.

John Hayes

Frequent contributor

Mar 11, 2025

Carastro:
I bought my photoshop many years ago before they made it rent only, still have the installation disk. Of course it is not the latest version. but does everything I need.
I think renting it is appalling.

Like you, I bought a copy of PS. It was back in the 90’s and as I recall, it cost around $950. I used it for a few years but of course, it slowly went completely out of date. When I turned around to update it, they wanted another $1,000! So the average monthly cost to stay up to date back then was somewhere between $15 and $25 per month, but you had to commit to periodic large up-front payments to keep buying the latest version—if that’s what you wanted to do.

I personally think that the subscription model is fantastic. I originally subscribed for $9.99/month and I’ve had the latest, greatest version ever since. I don’t even notice the roughly $10/month cost to keep it going. That’s less than what I pay for internet service by nearly an order of magnitude. What is so appalling about that? I’m a card carrying member of the cheap bastard’s club so if you really think that this is too expensive, I can send you a membership application so you can join the club.

John

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Dan Kearl

Mar 11, 2025

Tony Gondola:
Thing is, Photoshop doesn't have a base cost, it's $263.88 US a year and you never own it.

I pay $9.99 a month for my subscription...
I also have Affinity photo, it is a nice software package but it is NOT Photoshop by any measure.
It has some nice features but as John Hayes points out, Camera Raw alone worth the cost, Affinity has nothing like it.

Wei-Hao Wang

Mar 11, 2025

Camera Raw aside (we are talking about astrophotography right? CR is less useful for astrophotography, I suppose), I am curious about what else Photoshop can do while Affinity can't.

After stacking, gradient removal, and BXT, NXT in PI, I convert the file to 16 bit TIFF and move to PS for everything else. (I even run StarNet++ in command-line mode, without PI's interface.) PS is essential to me since two decades ago. At this moment, I feel the price for subscription affordable and justifiable, especially because I have the educational discount. But at a fundamental level, I don't like the idea of subscription. I accept it, but don't like it. So I am open to alternatives, if that can be as powerful as Photoshop.

I am curious if there is anyone who had relied on PS for decades for the photographic career and feel satisfied after switching to Affinity. If you are such a person, I would like to hear about your experience of switching, particularly on workflows that are relevant to astrophotography.

Engaging

Lynn K

Mar 11, 2025

I started astropotography about 19 years ago, when the only post processing software was Photoshop CS2. I started with R. Scott Ireland's book Photoshop Astronomy. It helped getting me started. But the most help was Adam Block's Photoshaop tutorials. I tryed Warrem Kellers, but found them too hard to follow. I bought PS version 5 years ago and still use it. Old versions may for sale cheap, but may not have the latest features that John Hayes mentioned.

Unlike you, I'm just now learning PixInsight.

I woulds suggest forget the books and YouTubs and go straight to Adam Block's "Dimentions of Photoshop" for $50.

Lynn K.

Concise

Clayton Ostler

Mar 11, 2025

Mark McComiskey:
Thanks! I will take a look at Affinity.

I own both Photoshop and Affinity photo. I also happen to own pizinsight. I know it all sounds crazy. However I have come back around to using affinity photo more and more. There's a guy named James ritson he has created some really good macros for affinity photo. There are also some pretty good plugins that you can buy that work for both affinity and Photoshop. Yesterday just for kicks I processed an image 100% in affinity photo without using anything in pixinsight. I feel like the results turned out pretty good. I highly suggest affinity photo.

Bob Lockwood

Mar 11, 2025

Dan Kearl:
Tony Gondola:
Thing is, Photoshop doesn't have a base cost, it's $263.88 US a year and you never own it.

I pay $9.99 a month for my subscription...
I also have Affinity photo, it is a nice software package but it is NOT Photoshop by any measure.
It has some nice features but as John Hayes points out, Camera Raw alone worth the cost, Affinity has nothing like it.

I totally agree, while Affinity is probably good software (I don't use it) but for the $120 a year I've been paying for years, it's well worth having.
If you can find a hard copy of PS CS5 or CS6 for a couple hundred $$, it will do just about everything PSCC can do, and it's a onetime purchase.

Carastro

Mar 11, 2025

John Hayes:
Carastro:
I bought my photoshop many years ago before they made it rent only, still have the installation disk. Of course it is not the latest version. but does everything I need.
I think renting it is appalling.

Like you, I bought a copy of PS. It was back in the 90’s and as I recall, it cost around $950. I used it for a few years but of course, it slowly went completely out of date. When I turned around to update it, they wanted another $1,000! So the average monthly cost to stay up to date back then was somewhere between $15 and $25 per month, but you had to commit to periodic large up-front payments to keep buying the latest version—if that’s what you wanted to do.

I personally think that the subscription model is fantastic. I originally subscribed for $9.99/month and I’ve had the latest, greatest version ever since. I don’t even notice the roughly $10/month cost to keep it going. That’s less than what I pay for internet service by nearly an order of magnitude. What is so appalling about that? I’m a card carrying member of the cheap bastard’s club so if you really think that this is too expensive, I can send you a membership application so you can join the club.

John

Thanks John, I have made a note of your offer and should I find myself needing to use it, I will contact you at a later date, I am sure I can find you on here.
Carole

Dominic Wijker

Mar 11, 2025

Trevor Jones Astrobackyard processing guide gave me a kick-start:

https://astrobackyard.com/image-processing-guide/

Carastro

Mar 11, 2025

Lynn K:
I started astropotography about 19 years ago, when the only post processing software was Photoshop CS2. I started with R. Scott Ireland's book Photoshop Astronomy. It helped getting me started. But the most help was Adam Block's Photoshaop tutorials. I tryed Warrem Kellers, but found them too hard to follow. I bought PS version 5 years ago and still use it. Old versions may for sale cheap, but may not have the latest features that John Hayes mentioned.

Unlike you, I'm just now learning PixInsight.

I woulds suggest forget the books and YouTubs and go straight to Adam Block's "Dimentions of Photoshop" for $50.

Lynn K.

Yup, I bought a DVD of Adam Block, and learnt a whole lot off him.

Tony Gondola

Frequent contributor

Mar 11, 2025

Bob Lockwood:
Dan Kearl:
Tony Gondola:
Thing is, Photoshop doesn't have a base cost, it's $263.88 US a year and you never own it.

I pay $9.99 a month for my subscription...
I also have Affinity photo, it is a nice software package but it is NOT Photoshop by any measure.
It has some nice features but as John Hayes points out, Camera Raw alone worth the cost, Affinity has nothing like it.

I totally agree, while Affinity is probably good software (I don't use it) but for the $120 a year I've been paying for years, it's well worth having.
If you can find a hard copy of PS CS5 or CS6 for a couple hundred $$, it will do just about everything PSCC can do, and it's a onetime purchase.

The problem is, if you buy/rent PS today it will cost you $263.88 US a year, to rent. I used to have a copy of PS5 for years and it was fine but I can do the same things with just about any layer based photo editor, paid or free.

This thread is starting to sound like the old PixInsight verses anything else debate and, equally useless. People love what they use and are comfortable with. if it was expensive they will love it more. I think what matters is how well you understand and apply the tools you have. No matter what your choices may be. It comes down to understanding process and taste.

Dan Kearl

Mar 11, 2025

Tony Gondola:
This thread is starting to sound like the old PixInsight verses anything else debate and, equally useless. People love what they use and are comfortable with. if it was expensive they will love it more. I think what matters is how well you understand and apply the tools you have. No matter what your choices may be. It comes down to understanding process and taste.

OK, then why opine about the topic at all?
The OP asked about using Photoshop. People gave opinions on why it is useful and a good product.
The OP did not ask for the cheapest best software, it asked about Photoshop which is the most popular software used by professional photographers.
The thread is only "useless" to you, I think the OP got some very good information.

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