Astrophotography Software Tools
Software Title	Producer	Website	Cost (CD$)	Description
Meade Autostar Suite	Meade Instruments	http://www.meade.com/autostar/	included	Autostar Suite is software supplied with Meade's various imaging hardware.  It supports both basic and advanced image processing procedures.
Corel PhotoPaint X3	Corel	http://www.corel.com	$    490.00	PhotoPaint is part of the CorelDraw Graphics Suite X3, and offers advanced image editing capabilities.  Mainly used at the end of the astrophotography image process - final crop, resizing, touching up colour balance and contrast, annotation.
Neat Image Pro	ABSoft	http://www.neatimage.com	$      70.00	Neat Image effectively reduces noise in images by modelling the noise patterns.  Works for astrophotos as well as "normal" photos. A non-Pro version is also available at lower cost.
Photoshop CS2	Adobe	http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/	$    780.00	Photoshop can be purchased alone or as part of a suite of Adobe products.  Photoshop is the best-supported software by third parties for astrophotography processing instructions and plugins.  Software can be used to process astro images from start to finish, and supports tonal adjustment, compositing, and professional prepress features. Version CS3 is released, but costs more.
Photoshop Elements	Adobe	http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/	$    130.00	Photoshop Elements is a simplifed version of the full-version Photoshop. Software can be used to finish off images as described for Corel Photopaint (above).
ImagesPlus	MLUnsold	http://www.mlunsold.com/	$    165.00	Converts raw image formats, calibrates images using dark, bias and flat frames, very effective digital development, registration, stacking, huge number of other features, tutorial videos are very helpful to explain the concepts and software features
Deepsky Stacker		http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/	Free	Simple registration and stacking functions.
Astronomy Tools	Noel Carboni	http://www.prodigitalsoftware.com/	$      25.00	These tools are used as plugins for Photoshop and include a number of excellent enhancement, artifact reduction and noise reduction tools that are particularly easy to use.
AstroArt	MSB Software	http://www.msb-astroart.com/	$    235.00	Advanced image processing, digital development, deconvolution.
Registar	Auriga Imaging	http://www.aurigaimaging.com/	$    165.00	Registration and stacking of images with starfields
Registax	Cor Berrevoets	http://www.astronomie.be/registax/	Free	Registration and stacking planetary images
For more info about astrophotography and about RASC Victoria Centre, please browse our website: http://victoria.rasc.ca