Camera Labs

Hi folks,

I'm tending to the view that more than half the battle with astrophotography is with post-processing once a minimum level of competence is achieved with the camera and telescope setup.

Please share your favourite tutorials by adding to this thread.

• Tutorials and Presentations by Ken Crawford
  
  Some Flash movies (which you can also download).
  
  Titles are "Clipping Masks & Color Mapping", "Depth of Field Processing" and "Multi Strength Decon Layer Blend". There's also a PowerPoint presentation entitled "Six Filter Narrowband Processing" which has been converted into a set of PDF files.
  
• Astrodon Imaging Tutorials
  
  This page links to another set of video tutorials but also be sure to check out the Image Gallery and judge the author by the quality of his work. I only came across this site by chance today as, though it is by Don Goldman of Astrodon and hosted on the Astrodon server, I've never seen a link to it from the main Astrodon pages.
  
  Titles are "Luminance Layering Concept", "G2VStars", "Calibration 1", "Calibration 2", "High Pass Filtering in Photoshop", "RGB Color enhancement", "Fixing Problems 1", "Fixing Problems 2", "Clipping layer mask method in Photoshop for Tri-Color Narrowband" and "How to Get Perfect Focus - S&T 2010 Article Preprint".
  
• Astro Anarchy - Tone Mapping v1
  
  This is an information rich site which can be hard to navigate if you are looking for something specific!
  
  Version 1 of Tone Mapping is described on the page linked to above and is downloadable as a PDF. This includes a description of using PhotoShop's "Dust & Scratches" filter to remove stars. Version 2 of Tone Mapping is described here by means of a few JPEGs but I haven't been able to find an equivalent PDF yet.

I've not had a chance to review most of the tutorials above yet, let alone put them into practice, but I thought I'd share and see if we can make this thread into a useful resource. If that happens I might even suggest to Gordon that it becomes a "Sticky".

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Great idea Bob, consider it stickied...

Hi folks,

Another one turned up today which might be useful for those imaging in OIII as well as Hα.

• Modified Bicolor Technique for combining Ha and OIII images

Bob.

_________________
OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Keep it up Bob, even if I'm way behind. I still haven't gone through all the tutorials in PixInsight yet...

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

.
There are a number of bite sized PhotoShop tutorial if you follow the links at the bottom right of the Atlas Astronomy site. Some aren't as well structured as I would like but there is further confirmation that "Layers" can be an astrophotographer's best friend.

A video tutorial for composing multi-panel (four or more) mosaics in PixInsight: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10801850/Astro%20Pictures/Videos/PI%20Gradient%20Merge%20Mosaic.mp4

Bob.

_________________
OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.