The New
Astronomy: Chapter 8
Cover photo: © Tony Hallas
Image Processing Fundamentals
The very best CCD images feature two important things: an excellent original exposure, and the right amount of image processing. This chapter will show you the basic operations that you will use on just about every image you take. The techniques you learn in this chapter will help you to remove noise, sharpen your images, smooth the appearance of nebulae, align images, and generally improve the appearance of any image you take.
Software
Tours
- Maxim/DL
- Mira
- CCDOPS
- Photoshop
- Other Software
Improving Image Clarity
- Sharpening
- Blurring
- Deconvolution
- Other Filtering Techniques
Manipulating Images
- Image Alignment
- Averaging vs. Median Combine
- Summing vs. Median Combine
- Combined Images vs. Longer Single Exposures
- Digital Development
M81 has very faint arms and a bright core, so image processing
is used to balance the visibility of both features. I used Maxim/DL's
Digital Development to provide this clear view of the full range of
M81's feautres.
Image Copyright 2000 by Ron Wodaski