A Welcome Note To Newbies

[shahzadmasih]

Hi, This post is very informative, however I would like some specific information. If someone can help me then please send me a private message. Best Regards,

[Swampy]

shahzadmasih

You're going to have to be more specific. What do you need help with?

[CharlesBell]

Thanks to all of you. I have just joined in. This is a lot more fun than I expected.

I work mainly on astronomy images and have a lot more to learn. I usually image comets with a 12 inch telescope and a CCD camera, (Lately all the comets are very faint). I am working on an image of a globular cluster called M2.

I have some digitized family album images to work on and share with my relatives.

Plus I have dozens of images taken with a Nikon D50 of the flowers around my house from last spring and summer.

It was quite by accident finding this forum. Already enjoyed Natalie's music
and a few winking avatars.

Hope to hear from you,

Charles

[Kraellin]

welcome, charlesbell.

would love to see some of your astronomy photos. every once in a while i'll visit the nasa site(s) and marvel at some of their imagery. and not that i expect you'll get the same thing with a 12 inch as they do with the hubble, but i do find it fascinating.

post them in the photophaphy forum if you just want to show off, or maybe in the art forums if you'd like to see what others might do with them.

[CharlesBell]

The latest version of the image I am working on today was just posted to:

http://bellsouthpwp2.net/c/h/charbell/M2-09142006.jpg

This is an image of a globular cluster named M2 in the Messier catalog.
Its a glob of over 150,000 stars. Its looks like a fuzz ball when you look at it in the telescope eyepiece.

The sky size of this object fits well with my equipment setup.

I use a 12 inch Meade SCT telescope with an F/6.3 focal reducer, and an SBIG ST-2000XCM single shot color CCD camera guided with an AO-7 adaptive optics unit. This is the same setup I use for doing my comet studies.

This image is a stacked composite made from ten consecutive 120 second exposures. The images were calibrated with dark frame subtraction and flat field correction, and then each R,G,B color channel was extracted and aligned with an image registration program, the aligned color channel images were median combined, then brought into PhotoshopCS2 one color channel at a time via the NASA/ESA Fits Liberator plugin using a log stretch on the intensities. Then it is basic layers processing with Levels, Curves, Color, Saturation, etc.

I would certainly entertain any comments especially critical ones.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!!!

[Kraellin]

that's very cool

you realize, of course, that everything after '12 inch Meade" all went over my head, right? astronomy jargon! he wants me to understand astronomy jargon! hehe, ok, i actually probably understood more than i'm letting on. for us lay folk, i'm guessing that you basically are allowing and correcting for the displacement blur in the image due to the rotation of the planet during the time lapse(es), no?

but why bring them in one channel at a time? red shift?

[CharlesBell]

First off, the object is a star cluster. Its way way out there. So there's no rotation to worry about. You are right about considerations for planet rotation.

There is a slight image alignment difference between each image that's unavoidable. So all the images have to be aligned though a process called image registration. Then you stack the images which is basically runs a pixel addition process on the images. A median combine is the best overall process to stack astronomical images. There are random cosmic ray hits that get eliminated this way. Sometimes I get satellites tracking through the field of view. The median combine improves the data signal to noise ratio in the combined image.

A CCD camera integrates the incoming light, but there is read noise when the chip pixels are read. If the exposure is too long the pxels get saturated. So the basic technique is to median combine multiple images.

The image files downloaded from the CCD Camera are in a Debayer color matrix format that cannot be aligned and combined directly. Image registration is at the subpixel level. This is over my head.

So I have to separate out the red, blue, and green color components of each image into there own separate sub file, so they can be aligned.

All the red image files are then stacked/median combined. Then the green, then blue. Any order.

I end up with three files (R, G, and B) saved in Fits format. These are actually 16 but grey scale image files for each color.

The NASA/ESA Fits Liberator plugin reads Fits files and provides lots of options for histogram stretching. This is very necessary to see all the detail in bright globular star cluster.

I could use the same programs that I use for image acquisition, registration, etc.. to create an RGB tiff file, but the Fits Liberator seems to do a better job.

I open Photoshop and create a new blank RGB image and bring in the red, green, and blue component images and copy and paste them into the R, B, and G channels.

Then process with Levels, Curves, photoshop tools to bring out the detail and suppress background noise.

Now this last part is why I am here on this site.

Everything up to this point is busy work requiring no special skills as that part of the process is very mechanical.


I think I am going to post a new thread about this because its probably off the jist of the newbie thread.

Thanks for the welcome.

[dayananda]

Thanks Jak! Happy to find a place as this!

Registered just an hour before. Will utilize all the help available.

Also, will try to be of help!

[serna1]

Hi, not sure where to introduce myself, but my name is Patty and I discovered photoshop about 2 years ago. I love working with pictures (actually my children's pictures I started by making small corrections then to creating actual portraits with various backdrops... I'm still learning everyday something new about photoshop and I hope that I will learn even more by being a member of this really cool site Thanks for in advance for all the cool things I know I will learn!

Patty

[JackBush]

Hi All,

I am a newbie to Retouch Pro. Looks like a great site and I'm looking forward to getting all kinds of tips.

I use Photoshop Elements 3 and found this site via a posting on the Adobe Forums site.

Watch for my questions. (But I promise to search first!)

[Kendall 1989]

Hi,
I am new here. I am glad too be here.

[juggler]

Hello Everyone. This is my first post here. I've not been around much but I intend to be from now on though. I love it here and thank-you for being here.

[Rock151]

Hi, This is my first post and I wanted to introduce myself...My name is Rocco and I run a home based photo restoration / retouching / enhancement biz. I am looking forward to interacting with the people here as so many of you seem so eager to help and offer advice.

[marcojazz]

Hi, all good people, this is my first time on this site, and i am looking forward to learn and enjoy this site
Marco

[nu2n65]

Hello, everyone
This is my first post here as well as a "newbie"... I actually found this site yesterday as I was looking for links to refer another fellow digital photo enhancer enthusiast. I was really WOW'ed by the tutorials and resources on this site. Am looking forward to sharing and learning more.
Ruby

[artstu]

Just thought I'd say hello. Just joined and it looks a very interesting site. Plenty of practise samples available and some very lively & informative discussion. Looking forward to paticipating.
Bye for now.

[Snooky]

Hi Jak
I'm having trouble getting a clear and consistent bevel effect on my fonts in PSElements 2. Could you direct me to the appropriate forum for posting my question? Or perhaps you could answer me as well... I want to make fonts that are sharp and clear with a shallow drop shadow background and bevelled. I know how to do it in PSE2 but the results are not consistent. At times they are very clear and other times they are fuzzy. What am I doing wrong? Are there any forums that might discuss these kinds of issues.
Thank you for your kindness.

Snooky

[Britsdad]

Here you go Snooky, a forum just for you

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photoshop-elements-q/
Regards.....John

[NooNooPud]

Hi everyone

I'm Nicki, and I stumbled upon this site a little while ago and thought I'd check in with everyone and introduce myself. I'm 29 and I live in the south of England and recently I've found myself getting more and more drawn into the world of Photoshop.

At the moment, I'm in the middle of a project and I'm getting really stuck, so shortly I'll be looking for the right place to ask a question about it lol. Although if anyone can direct me, that would be brilliant too. Basically, I'm trying to get a picture of a friend and make them look like a ghost. I don't just want to use opacity, as I really want them to look spooky. If you can help me, I'd really appreciate it.

Hope to speak to some of you soon.

Nicki
xx

[Xntrik]

Hi, I decided, what the heck, I'll post a note to say how much I've enjoyed what I've seen so far - it looks like there are lots of interesting people and places here to explore. I have a variety of interests, worked doing layout and design on a real estate mag for a few years and am now at liberty to do what I want. Sooo, I decided to work on digital scrapbooking kits since I am the sole holder of all of my Grandmother's and Daughter's photo collections (some of which need tlc) and there are other family members who want copies (and I have some relatives to remove from the photos). I know, I know, I always sort of thought that was hokey but I'm having fun putting photo collections into meaningful groupings, learning basic html, and designing off the wall fun things with Photoshop Elements 5 and Photoshop. I hope to pick up some tips and talk to some friendly people here.... Jak, since you mentioned it, there is a tut I'd love to have but will wait for another post for it.... Linda aka Xntrik

[nu2n65]

Nikki,
Try the Flaming Pear Plug-ins:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1981064,00.asp
There are a lot of cool effects/filters here and one gives a ghostly feel to images.
Hope this helps!

[NooNooPud]

Thanks so much. I'm going to try that now

[Lynn B]

Lynn B here....I don't remember how I came across this site....but I'm here to stay. Finally a site where being a "newbie" is an ongoing learning opportunity without the negative stigma. Thanks.

[sooznooz]

Thanks for the welcome! I gotta tell ya, this is the most AWESOME website I have found in a long time....maybe forever! I've learned so much already and can't wait to contribute some stuff. Strictly an amateur but definitely a digital photo addict!
Sue

[Andy Wright]

Hi all,

Just a quick 'hello' before I get lost in this mysterious labrynth of information......

Cheers
Andy

[ceca2love]

Hi all
I am a real newbie, here and with photoshop, but I think this is one of the best places to learn from.
As a new mum I got interested to learn more about photography so I can have nicer pics of my little one, but I also found that I have even greater interest in learning to work with Photoshop. I loooooove Photoshop and what the programe can do, so I spend all my free time (not that I have lot) learning and playing with photos.
I hope, soon, with your help,all my bubs photos will look like professional ones :-)

Cheers

Ceca

[Zeckson]

Hello all,

Yes, I am a newbie (oh no... Not again...) and this is the first time I am posting here. I know RetouchPro through some other forum threads when I was searching for methods, tips, techniques on photo retouching, mainly on portraits.

I have been to many other forums on the Internet and must say that my experiences vary from one to another. I sincerely hope that this forum members respect other members and not use abusive words or sentences. I have had extremely bad experiences on this and now very skeptical about it.

But I am sure with Jak in the house, things will be smooth. I am not an expert in Photoshop skills. I learn my stuffs mainly through trial and error and getting inspirations from other photos. I don't shoot a lot but just occassionally. When I have done my post processing, somehow, I find them missing something but I don't know how to put it in words. I felt my processing is very boring and dull and with no creativity.

I hope to learn lots of techniques and methods from the pros here in this forum so to better enhance my pictures. I may have a lot of questions too. Just hope forum members are not pissed off with some of my stupid questions or consider me as a waste of time. I really wanna learn and make my pictures better.

Hope to have a good time here with you guys!

[16bitlolita]

i guess im welcome over here too

i hope i ll have many to share too

[tchill]

Just found this site. I am exploring it for now.

Thanks

[rev13]

Glad to be here -
looking forward to finally figuring out what the hell i've been doing!

and how to do it better