Tutorials

damfo

Dark Arts Tutorial Blogs

Getting Started in Astrophotography – A blog entry explaining the different types of astrophotography and a list of what equipment is required to be able to shoot the different types of objects in the night sky

How To Shoot The Milky Way And Night Sky With A DSLR Camera – A comprehensive guide to the equipment, settings and basic techniques needed in order to shoot the Milky Way and night sky successfully.

Dew Control on a Budget – How to keep your optics (camera or telescope) dew-free on even the most humid nights.

Video Tutorials

Episode I – Stacking Night Sky Images Using Adobe Photoshop – From widefield images shot with your camera to deep space images shot with a telescope, all astrophotography can benefit from stacking. This video tutorial will walk you through stacking images step by step using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, the most common image editing tools that most photographers already own.

Episode II : The Moon – Post-Processing of DSLR Lunar Images  –  In this episode, I’m covering the steps and software required to process lunar images shot with a DSLR or mirrorless camera.


Software

Adobe Photoshop – This program needs no introduction as it’s the industry standard photo editing tool and probably the most used editing tool for astrophotography. Traditionally, Photoshop was priced out of the reach of most amateur photographers as a whole, but with Adobe’s Creative Cloud Photography Bundle subscription plan, Photoshop and Lightroom are now available at a very attractive monthly subscription price. ($9.99 US / month*)

DeepSkyStacker – Probably the most extensively used tool for stacking deep sky and widefield images. (Free)

Registax – The premier Windows tool for stacking video frames for solar system imaging applications. (Free)

Gradient Xterminator – An amazing Photoshop plugin by Russell Croman used to remove background gradients in astro photos. Definitely worth every penny in my opinion! ($49.95*)

Astronomy Tools Action Set – a very useful set of Photoshop actions designed by Noel Carboni. It automates many commonly-used procedures used in processing astro photos. ($21.95*)

Annie’s Astro Actions – A great set of useful Photoshop actions by Anna Morris to process astro photos. Very similar to Astronomy Tools action set. Some prefer this set over the other. Both are very good, and this one is cheaper too. ($15*)

Microsoft ICE – Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the application creates a high-resolution panorama that seamlessly combines the original images. Excellent for stitching togetherimages of the Milky Way to make a giant panorama. (Free)

* All prices listed in US dollars