Making Your Own Color AstroImages-or-Learning to Love the DSS

Al Kelly http://www.ghg.net/akelly/DSScolor.ppt

Preparation of the DSS images for color compositing is now complete.

Although the compositing can be accomplished in most image processing programs, including AIPV2, MaxIm DL, PixInsight, Photoshop, etc., later versions of Photoshop (8.0 and up) have the most flexibility and provide the best results.

The remaining slides show how to create the color composite in Photoshop.

Caveats and Final Thoughts:

HST Phase 2 images are available for the northern celestial hemisphere only. Green images for the southern hemisphere can be synthesized by averaging the Red and Blue images.

In order to load FITS images into Photoshop, you will need a plug-in loader, which can be obtained free online from Eddie Trimarchi or FITS Liberator

When processing dim nebulae (low surface brightness galaxies, etc.), it is often better to run two stages of DDP and linear stretching on the luminance image. Do what is described on charts 9 and 10, then do the same steps again on the result.

The image processing described here works equally well on filtered CCD images that you take yourself. BEWARE: If you dont have an astronomical CCD camera, once you successfully do this type of processing you may not be able to stop yourself from buying one!