Pre- and final-processing techniques used on raw images taken with Atik 460ex and Canon 20Da/60Da cameras

Preprocessing of raw images taken with Atik 460ex mono camera is done

using CCDStack2 program.

In order to get the best performance out of this software program it is recommended to get hold of the tutorial material produced by Mr. Adam Block.

Link: http://www.caelumobservatory.com/store.shtml

Preprocessing of raw images taken with Canon 20Da/60Da camera is done using ImagesPlus program.

In order to get the best performance out of this software program it is recommended to get hold of the tutorial material produced by Mr. Mike Unsold.

Link: http://www.mlunsold.com/

Final processing of pictures being preprocessed as said above is done using Adobe Photoshop CS6 program 64bit version.

In order to get the best performance out of this software program it is, as a start, best to get hold of the tutorial material produced by Mr. Adam Block.

Link:  http://www.caelumobservatory.com/store.shtml

In the Equipment section I will elaborate more about my final processing

techniques.

I have chosen to use Photoshop as my prefered processing

tool after preprocessing but IMHO other processing tools like PixInsight, ImagesPlus or Astroart can also do the job.

Most important is to get very experienced with all the features that the tool can offer and forget all the other tools that are on the market place.

Additional tutorial material can be found here:

Link: http://www.imagingdeepsky.com/Presentations.html

Link: http://www.astroimages.com/image_processing.htm

Just make a search on the web and a lot of free material are available out there, it is just a matter of finding and start using it.

Note: The picture shown on the right side was taken by Mr. Morten la Cour and in my opinion represent the best raw material that I ever have seen of the M51 galaxy.