Manipulating Astrophotography Images in Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a powerful program which can be used in astrophotography. Although it is considered a general image editing program, it has a number of functions and features which can be beneficial in improving and processing images taken of celestial bodies. The following are some of the most helpful tools.
Crop and Rotation Tools
Some of the basic features of the program involve cropping and rotating the image. The cropping tool is helpful in centering the image. To access it, simply click the crop tool icon from the program’s tool box. Create a box around the area to be retained. Resize if necessary, and press enter to finalize. Users may also choose to rotate the image before cropping by selecting the rotation option from the Image Menu.
Editing Contrast, Sharpness and Speckle
In a lot of cases, the image will require more tweaking. Modifying the contrast levels will help reduce the brightness of the image or try to make it more detailed. Referred to as the Levels tool, this can be accessed through the Adjustments opinion under the Image menu. The red, blue and green levels can also be adjusted using this tool.
The Despeckle tool can be found when choosing Noise under the Filter menu. This can help remove or reduce the amount of noise in the image caused by over-processing or by the camera. The reverse is known as the Unsharp Mask Tool. This can be accessed by clicking Sharpen found under the Filter menu and can help increase the amount of detail in an image.
Color Correction Tools
For adjusting the color, there is the Color Balance tool under Adjustments by the Image menu. By changing the color levels, it helps enhance the image further, making it more detailed. Also under Adjusts is the Hue and Saturation tool, which can adjust the levels of individual colors.