Looking to explore the night sky but don’t want to break the bank on expensive astronomy software? Look no further! In this post, I’ll explore some, but not all, of the top open source and freeware software options for amateur astronomers. Discover all the features and tools you need to take your imaging to the next level without spending a dime.
There are plenty of fantastic and expensive software applications that provide “free trials” of 30-90 days before they entice you to pay for a license to continue to use them. And that’s fine. If you don’t pay they’ll just make using them difficult by shutting off critical functionality or locking you out altogether until you do pay. I get it. You got to pay to play! But these software titles below are all free to download and use with no restrictions, but please understand that most of these will also have an option to “donate or contribute” money to those hard working folks that have spent hours of their time to bring these “free” applications to you.
So if you find yourself repeatedly using one or several of these applications I highly encourage you to do as I have done – show them some love, hit the donate button and contribute to their cause.
I was recently contacted by Ken Mitchell the creator/owner of PhotoKemi Star Tools. Ken graciously offered me the chance to obtain a copy of his PhotoKemi Star Tools as well as the PhotoKemi Star Tools Extras package in exchange for a blog post with my assessment. I gladly jumped at the chance. What follows are my results, before and after images, and thoughts on using PhotoKemi Star Tools on several of my astro images.
So what is PhotoKemi Star Tools anyway? It’s a collection or set of actions designed for use in Abode Photoshop specifically for editing/enhancing astrophotography images. Tasks that are typically generated manually using several simple steps to multiple steps with different tools and/or complicated iterations in Photoshop are condensed into Actions and run at the click of a button. That’s the power of PhotoKemi Star Tools.
In Photoshop they are referred to as “actions” but to me I think a more accurate name for them should be “auto tasks.” Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying that manually working your image in Photoshop is a “thing of the past.” Not at all, but having these auto tasks or actions at your finger tips will lighten the load and speed things up to be sure.
Beginners and experienced astrophotographers will find the PhotoKemi Star Tools action set easy to run, time saving and versatile to use when processing their images. I know I sure did. But there is another and perhaps most important aspect PhotoKemi Star Tools affords the beginner – reducing the post processing learning curve! Let’s face it from start to finish producing a great astro image is a huge undertaking for the newbie and any benefit or edge obtained in that long and diverse sequence of tasks is welcome and appreciated. Especially when it works and works well.
M45 – Before and after using PhotoKemi Star Tools. I wanted to see how much nebulosity I could bring out in my image of The Pleiades. The answer? A lot more. Some of the PhotoKemi Star Tools I just to produce the image included: nebula filter, color correction, reduce background stars, sharpen nebula and reduce star bloating.
Current amateur astronomy information such as points of interest and events in the night sky, star party dates, educational information, telescopes buying tips and much more.
