My Most Powerful Astrophotography Processing Secrets 

I shared this video in a FaceBook Group just to let you know. I am an Admin in a group called Budget Astrophotography. We try to help beginners in this challenging hobby. There is a limit of $3,000 USD of equipment to post pictures (I can't post with my big rig, but I can still post with my travel rig). We do NOT want to scare off beginners thinking they need a $30,000 rig to get good Astro images. I remember my meager beginnings wondering why my images stunk compared to others. Equipment, knowledge and practice changed that...LOL. Thanks for the great videos. You have improved my images and your videos are always informative. Keep up the great work.

Awesome video, learned a lot there! A few more tips: 1) To isolate stars into a star mask (without nebulosity): duplicate your image into a new layer. Then apply a dust and scratches filter with a 15px radius or more. Then change the blending option of that layer to difference or subtract. You now have all stars without the nebulosity. 2) The "dehaze" feature in adobe raw or lightroom is amazing getting rid of light pollution.

Hey Trevor, great video as always! People have probably pointed this out already but you should be careful when copy-pasting your channels to a new file : by default photoshop creates an 8-bit image, which means when pasting in there you're losing signals (from your original 16-bit image). And since you are making it as one of your first steps, this means that all subsequent changes to the image (levels, curves etc) are all going to be made on 8-bit layers re-pasted onto 16-bit. If your noise is very low already then that's not much of a problem, and the major reason for using 16-bit images is to have a lot of nuance BEFORE stacking, but every bit helps! (sorry, pun not intended)

Darn ! Now I need an intensive crash course on photo shop . I’m passable with Light Room but PS ? Clueless !! Excellent video Trevor . You do have me on a journey .

Thanks Trevor for helping me. All that you have dedicated to sharing with us is REALLY APRECIATED! Thank you man.

I purchased your image processing tutorials a while ago... they were great. This video was a perfect addition. I could follow every step, I like the pace... quick and to the point. Thank you... just put the pull over hoodie on my Xmas with list!

Thank you for this video! This is exactly what I needed to kick my processing up a notch.

Great video! Thanks for opening my eyes to channel processing!

You know being a pro/am photog before I got into astrophotography was a blessing (I know you have an extensive background in photography not just Astro). I think my favorite thing about the way you do things is the logic behind your decisions... I’m not trying to kiss ass but dude the thought process behind the scopes, mounts, filter etc has reason behind it. Your experience and technique on the capture end of your process is awesome but I think where you truly shine is in post process. I’m not sure everyone can appreciate your knowledge of photoshop and how in depth you go in this video. I can’t wait to sit down and watch this video again! We are in the process of moving right now so I have zero time to get out and shoot but we are moving to much darker skies and I’m excited! Please keep the content coming man, I know I appreciate it and I’m sure all your other followers do too!

Brilliant! Thanks for the tips! Something I've not done before is working on a per channel basis. Time to go over some old data until I get clear skies again!

Thanks Trevor. Great video and tips. I'm a big fan of the PSD process. Keep up the good work

I love watching images like this come to life. Its like magic

Great tutorial man.. I’m off to watch the in-depth one now - thanks 👍🏻👊🏻✌🏻

Thank you very much for this great Video, put your Ideas to good use already!

Thanks Trevor. Excellent tutorial.

Awesome tutorial Trevor! I really like the simple noise reduction and reduce stars technique by channel!

Amazing video Thankyou for posting !

You made me begin this hobby and I am very thankfull for that

Trevor, I know from watching all of your videos that you had a lot of Photo Shop experience before you started with DSLR astrophotography and so you might not have a full appreciation of just how steep the learning curve is for people who started this hobby with no PS experience at all. Videos like this are just so invaluable, I just cannot over state it! You should consider creating a sister channel where this sort of video is all you do! Take all that old data that you still have sitting there on old hard drives and once a week or twice a month do a video of you processing that data. I know it couldn't be a video of the whole entire process from start to finish, that would get repetative and boring but every object is different and some data has some weird thing in it that has to be dealt with in a way that is outside the normal process and every little nugget like that shows those of us who have never used PS except for astrophotography something that we didn't even know that the software could do! I, for example, didn't know that Camera Raw even existed before I saw it on one of your videos. I didn't know that you could change a layer to "luminance" until I saw this video and I don't think it would ever have occured to me to adjust the noise level on a per channel basis and I had no idea that the "Minimum" filter existed or what it did or how to use it. And I'm certain that I'm not alone. The equipment used to capture that data is huge, of course, but unless you know how to properly process that data, this hobby is a hugely expensive waste of time. Photoshop skills is where the rubber really meets the road in astrophotography and you've got the skills to take your entire audience to the next level. I strongly urge you to consider making this type of video a way bigger part of what you do on RU-vid.

I'm getting some basic stuff for Christmas and I can't wait to start this hobby, have had a 10 in dob for a while but now i got some money for a new set up so lets go

Yet another inspiring video. Thanks Trevor. You really do explain your processing very well. I heard you mention that you may get yourself an observatory in the future. I have just finished building one myself. It’s heaven. I had a 2 hour window of clear skies last night and got 90minutes of imaging in. That would never have been possible before the observatory was built. We do have very changeable weather over here in England which makes an observatory a godsend. I can’t wait for you to get one too. 👍. Paul. Harpenden. England.

Thanks for making this great video.

Learned a Lot. i enjoy watching all of your videos and always learn something.

Wow...A fantastic crash course in image processing. Your words at the end have made me wonder about the viability of buying PixInsight when I have Photoshop and did not realise until your video, what can be done with it! Thanks so much for this.

Very useful tutorial Trevor

Nice tutorial. Thank you!

Wow! I can't thank you enough for this video!

Great Video. Even after using PS for years it's good to learn something new.

Love these vids!

Thank you for this tutorial 🙏 I tried prosessing some old data I thought was way bad, but using your techniques I was able to extract a lot of nice images 🤗 I’m still waiting for my telescope and AVX mount, so practicing on photons captured through my DSLR on a Moveshootmove tracker must be good practice 🙌 So keep’em videos coming 🥳😉

Very informative. I learned a lot.

Hello Trevor. Greetings from Auckland NZ. Thank you for this tutorial. Quite new to photoshop but after seeing this I will give it a go. Have a wonderful day.

Very very useful! Thank you

Superb video. Thank you.

This is such a great video. You killed it. I love it...

Mate ive just produced my best image ever following this! I thought it was my gear letting me down, turns out it was my poor processing. Great vid man

great Tutorial Trevor! I'm going to try this on the Andromeda Image you supplied on your site! Excellent channel!

This was one of your better videos. Thanks.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and techniques on this video! :)

Great video Trevor, your original processing videos have really helped me get more out of my images. I never thought of processing each channel separately, I can’t wait to try this on my next image. If you get the chance can you do a video about how to process star clusters images? I have been trying the techniques from your other videos on the double cluster in Perseus and globular cluster M4, but it feels a little different when there is no nebulosity to pull out. Keep up the great work. Thanks

great vid trevor explains a lot for me that i didnt understand before

Very nice video man!

There's PERPETUALLY something new to learn in this hobby, and you're a great teacher! Thanks, Trevor!

Hi Trevor. Love your work.

thank you for this tutorial

That was insanely helpful! I think I'm going to go back and re-edit a few images.

Great stuff Trevor, thanks.

just purchased your processing guide. Good work

🤩♥️really really thanks this video it's really helpful

Amazing, thank you so much for this :-)

Very useful - buying your Processing Guide!

A lot of cool tools in this video. You really know how to make astrophotography approachable for every skill level. I really liked this video. Great job!

Thanks Trevor for this interesting ideas, definitely going to try out these!

Thanks Trev, really helped me make better use of Photoshop

Great video, thanks for keeping it PhotoShop. 💫

Biggest Thank you!!!

Nicely done...thanks.

Awesome!

Great video 👌

Most useful video that I've seen today!

I bought the guide. I read it. Then realized all of the information is available by watching the free videos on RU-vid. Additionally, the guide is very light on some impatient details. I want to say that the guide is worth the money, but it is really just a way to support the content creator because the guide isn't worth the money in itself.

Thanks for sharing! As Pixinsight user it`s hard to explain processing for newcommers in astrophotography, because almost everybody has PS, but your channel is the best one to recommend :)

Great job

You are awesome !

I'm so confused...Lol Someday maybe, Whew Thanks Trevor Give Rudy a treat for me! Clear Skies, God Bless

I liked it very much

Very nice

Your video makes me want to do a video to compliment your video. Here is one complimentary knowledge bit... When you layer your channels on top of each other to create the luminance, Your bottom layer (red) is 100%, your next layer up (green) was 50%, and your to player (Blue) was 20%. Your top layer ends up presented more than you think it was because of the layering. Here's why... When you put your green layer on top of the red layer and set it to 50% you are now seeing 50% of each layer. When you put your blue layer on top and set it to 20% you are only seeing 80% of the 50% of the green and red channels. The resulting luminance is 40% red, 40%, green, and 20% blue. Maybe that's what you were shooting for, but for clarity to those watching this-be aware of this 'covering' property of channels. You can set three channels all to 50%, but only the top layer will be 50% visible-the opacity of all other channels will be half of what they are currently at, and this property stacks with each layer put on top.

Awesome

Hey Trevor, not sure if this is still your process, but as someone who knows PhotoShop more than astrophotography, I'd suggest creating your curves and levels adjustments that you start out with in adjustment layers. You do this by clicking the half white/half black circle at the bottom of the layers panel and creating an adjustment layer there. This allows you to go back in and make fine tuned adjustments to those changes. It's identical to using the global levels and curves from the main menu, but this way you can apply it on a per layer basis and can also (as I said) go back in, and modify the adjustments later. Apologies if this has already been mentioned or if someone has already said this to you, but just from a workflow standpoint, I think this could greatly assist you and your viewers. Great content either way!

Thanks again Trevor for the fast lane tips. I tried to do my usual laptop/desktop copy by numbers routine, but as you warned a few times, the tutorial will be moving quickly and besides, I couldn't get pass the section on Camera Raw adjustments on the red channel because my CS6 PS version doesn't have Camera Raw listed under filters. I went round and round on this and ended up replacing version 7.1.1 with the last compatible version of Camera Raw for CS6 with 9.1.1, according to Adobe anyway. I'll have to figure out how to get it posted in PS filters because I see it as a very good tool during post. No problem using it in Bridge. I'm still a beginner after taking a break for over a year because of guiding frustrations with my mount. I restarted from the the basics and my learning curve is going much better now. However, I've bouncing around getting ahead of myself as new ideas come up and I get sidetracked from my original mission to figure out my guiding problems. I tried to switch to ASCOM guiding, aka pulse guiding and it took me longer than expected to find out cable management, something I thought was going to be simple by viewing video tutorials. I haven't seen them all, but those who suggest the transition, the key is eliminating the ST4 cable, but they don't give you the easy to follow steps to do so. In short, I thought I had the cabling correct, but the night I tried it PHD2 came back and told me "pulse guiding failed" your guiding will be ineffective". No easy answer at this point, but with my new take it in stride attitude, I know the answer lies somewhere. I know I'll purchase your processing guide, I have watched many of your tutorials and I just hope I can follow the cursor because that fits my learning style. Many of us beginners without IT experience or background (age) in computers need things delivered at half pace. BTW, what version of PS do you have?

Great to see step by step menu selection in photoshop and not assume we know wot ur talking about 👍

Trevor, you create some of the most amazing images... You must have a ton of them now. What happens to them? What do you DO with them all? Do you share them, put them together and SHOW them or just file them away for another day.

awesome

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I'm gonna try to apply as much of these tips as possible in affinity photo

Great video with cool techniques I haven’t seen before, thanks! I was wondering, when you kept flattening the scratch work area after you pasted into it, doesn’t that actually mix the newly pasted thing with what was already there? Wouldn’t just deleting the old layer have been better?

Wery thanks

Thank you😁 I consider myself as a newbie in astrophotography I currently imaging North America Nebula from PH UNTRACKED and using Cheap DSLR which is nikon d5300 maybe I need 2night worth more of imaging before the be good enough to post process (1hr total of exposure time) for now my friend help me to post process the current data but when I completed the Data I'm gonna try this Method Thanks for sharing😁😁

Brilliant tutorial 👍🏻 would this kind of process be the same for galaxy's?

Looks like there is hope for my Lobster claw after all... Thank you for making good on your promise! Trevor Delivers.

Love your work Trevor - thank you for all your efforts! One question if I may: I just picked up a Sky Watcher 120 ProED. I have no astrophotography experience but I believe I want to start with a CMOS color camera instead of DSLR. Is that move ill advised in your opinion? I really appreciate any thoughts no matter how brief. Thanks again - Terry

Great video Trevor. You took that image using a refractor scope and with a DSLR at prime focus? What scope did you use? Thanks again for the great video.

Fab tutorial thank you. What version of Photoshop do you use please?

That was an extensively didactic video Trevor. By the way, Have you achieved any NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day?

if u find a way to use the mask that is generated in camera raw sharpening panel, it can be used to select the stars.

Good information. How are you separating the channels?

Thanks Trevor. No Rudy, but still an excellent video.

Great video...thank you Trevor. When I use just the red channel as a luminosity layer, it turns the reds very pink that I've never been able to recover fully with HSL or color balance adjustments. Suggestions?

I can't wait for the day you release the video saying "I finally tried PixInsight - you guys were right."

AstroBackyard of old. I like it

I'm 6 minutes in and I gotta say dude, processing on a channel by channel basis like this is GENIUS!

Hi Trevor, this video looks really promising but there are a couple of steps I'm struggling with. I love the way you isolate individual channels for noise reduction (red), star reduction (blue) etc, then edit them individually and paste them in place. I'm trying to do the same thing in adobe photoshop CC 2019 but the 'paste' option is grayed out when I try and paste my edited channel back into the main channel document. Have you ever had this problem? Thanks

any free alterantive to the astronomy tools action set?

This is really cool! Love your videos and your Instagram page! Just started astrophotography recently and this is really eye opening and helpful Thanks a lot for everything you’re doing!!! Much love and support 👍

did you try using the green channel as a layer mask for the blue channel? Or, similarly, overlaying the green channel on top of the blue channel in luminance stack mode, and then recombining the channels?

Hey Trevor, please try Pixel 4 also☺️

👌💫🎯

Great video mate!! I have 1 query for the processing of data can we use anyother software like lightroom instead of an Adobe Photoshop?

Wish to find a video that will bridge that gap from what is good data and bad data. I started taking astrophoto's about 7 months ago and I am seeing a progression in what I am capturing, I am learning that I can only push the data so far in post also. But where there is limited equipment for a beginner i.e. camera, tripod, tracker and a lens (or even minus the tracker) how far can you push the photo in post production when the data has been stacked etc and not necessarily stacked properly i.e. missing darks or flats or no calibration frames at all. I realise adding more equipment like LPF will be a good next step but how well could experienced astrophotographers push their equipment knowing now what they do about the process and being restricted by a likely beginner setup. The limit on equipment is something that can be challenging for a beginner but it would be very helpful helping to find out if it actually is the equipment also! That comparison is something beginners always progress to.