Thank you for taking time to do this. I use GIMP for astro photos and am still new at astro photography (in the modern age) and I appreciate anyone who is sharing knowledge on using GIMP for astro photos. While I have taken many astro photos, I have not learned the methods of processing.. I would like to see something on clipping star images.
Thank you so much for your tutorials on GIMP. I am a newbie both with astrophotography and photo processing. I do not have photoshop so I downloaded GIMP and your tutorials were the only one that really helped me get started. More GIMP tutorials please?
Hey Ruzeen, just wanted to say thanks for making these videos. The GIMP tutorial video, and this one, have helped immensely with my astro photos as I only use GIMIP for processing. My photos are better because of the knowledge you shared!
Thanks for posting. I don't have much artistic flair, so I particularly enjoy your tutorials on using Gimp. I put them in my library and refer back to them often when I'm trying to make the most of my own images.
Thank you so much for the video. This procedure will help me a lot with my pictures. I really like your style of teaching / explaining what to do, why do it and what to look for to modily the procedure to make the images look the way we want them to look. Nice job.
OK, value-propagate is a new idea on me. Good call. I like the result. Now, if you want two more methods: 1) erode and dilate (one of them spreads darks-into-lights, the other the opposite); 2) wavelet decompose (makes a given number of layers at varying frequencies, ie characteristic object sizes - by adjusting opacities you can control the strength of structures by size eg 10px vs 20px). HTH :)
I know it's not easy figuring this stuff out, so I much appreciate you sharing this technique with everyone. I sometimes dabble with GIMP, you know, as it's free, and I have no doubt this technique will be a valuable resource. Especially for me as I fool around imagine with an achro. As you can imagine a bit of star reduction wouldn't go a miss :) Cheers Ruz, fab tutorial!
Thank matey. Well since I found how to do this I really wanted to pass the info on to everyone else 🙂 Gimp is great in that it's free, such a logical starting point really. Yeah I bet with an achro reducing stars could also possibly help with aberrations as well. Let me know how that works out for you! Cheers buddy
Tried this using someone else's tuition. Since then I now simply remove the stars with starnet and de stretch them. I also make adjustments to the brightness and contract. I simply then use addition of layers to put them back in much reduced. I think this works better personally.
Thanks for your videos on using gimp. This one has really helped me alot, I had no idea how to do a star reduction in gimp, so many people use photoshop and things dont always translate well between the two. Thanks again this helped alot.
Hi Ruzeen this is fantastic! As you know GIMP is my preferred choice so I'll be checking this out again once I am home from the office (going to be a long day lol!) I have an image I want to share with you now that I've gotten better results with 300 sec exposures. I have it on the Bin, I'll send you a link and see what you think. Good to see you here again and I appreciate you sharing the knowledge!
Thanks for the support John! Haha yeah If I was your neighbour then that would have been fun. I've thrown about the thought of private lessons but still giving it consideration
Thanks for the great video on using GIMP very helpful. Is this process done after all the traditional, curves, de-noise and sharpen etc or do you recommend somewhere in-between?
Thanks for the comment glad it was helpful. I'd do this step after my curves and editing my background and DSO. After that is usually do a star reduction then move into denoise and sharpening, with a star reduction towards the end if I so fancy
Great tutorial once again Ruz! More tools to play with, that's IF we ever get a clear night. Thank you! I'm thinking seriously about getting Affinity Photo, would I need to buy anything else? Love the GIMP tutorials, it's all I have now. 👍
Thanks Don Yeah these cloudy skies really are a bit rife at the moment! But a good reason to go back and edit older data. Great way of seeing improvement 🙂 I've been using Affinity a bit nowadays and I've not noticed the need to purchase any other software, and I think its still on offer. I released an Affinity processing video earlier this week if you didn't catch it. Can watch that if you fancy comparing the two workflows :)
Interesting tutorial. I image with an unmodified DSLR. Will this star reduction work just as easily on broadband images? Thanks Ruz. You have a great channel!
Really great video Ruz! I've never really got on with gimp, but it may be worth another look. One thing that I find gimp to be really bad at is combining mono images into a colour image. It would be good if you could do a video on that.
Excellent tutorial. I just watched your previous GIMP tutorial and I am glad you found a practical solution for star reduction. Perhaps you could try Starnet++. It is a bit slow, but it can use GPUs, and altogether will save you a lot of time making your star mask. The mask is so good that starnet++ can even remove the stars and let you work independently on the nebula and on the stars. Also, I noticed in your previous video that you do some manual masking for local adjustments, perhaps you could get the Nik collection plugin, it is well integrated with GIMP and does a great job for all sorts of local selective adjustments (color, contrast, brightness, structure, sharpness, noise). Other plugins to consider: G'MIC (500 filters, including deconvolution and denoise) and the GIMP Astrophotography plugin (outdated but rounds star more effectively than manually shifting masked layers and using "darken only").
Thanks for the video. The other Gimp video has helped me edit some of my images. Question: When in the process would you do this star reduction exercise? After editing all the nebulosity / background and after all the star mask editing (as per previous Video), or before? Or does it not matter. Thank you. Keep up the vids.
Thanks very much for the comment :) Hmm if I remember I think in the first video I said "now I'd do star reduction but don't know how to". But usually these days if after the initial curves stretching the stars are getting too big, I'd do it sooner. Usually though after I edit my background and DSO then when I stamp a new layer to carry on, then I'd do my star reduction, with s second pass of reduction - if required - towards the end Plan to keep up the videos mate got a few more in Gimp planned :)
Great work here! Would you use the same process and Value Propagate to increase the size/brightness of a star? So the opposite of what you are doing here. Basically my goal would be to simulate a diffuser filter on a lens when taking wide field astro shots.
Awesome glad to hear its working for you. Hmm,well in theory fits would give you as much data as possible since it's the native file format. But I believe TIFF is effectively lossless anyway. I think most of us use TIFF since it's just what most programs can read. If your computer has the horsepower to edit the stacked fits then by all means I think :) though I believe you'll still need to make sure they're 16/bit depth
Thanks for GIMP tutorials.. Very few UA-camrs provide those. By the way, do you know any method to brigthen/bloom the bigger stars? Similar to the starglow filter effect.. I mainly do constellation photography and I don't want to invest hundreds of dollars if it can be achieved in post processing.
Damn, this is great, many thanks. Careful of the low-resolution images like from my 450D some stars blur together and the Value Propagate causes streaking between adjoining stars. Still not a major issue though. May well be that my capture time was too long.
Thanks buddy! That's good info about the resolution and such. Stars blurring due to optical or sensor resolution isn't something I considered so it's good you bought that to light!
😁 I followed your instructions on star reduction but I ended up with weird halo type artifacts. Can I send you the pic I did so you can have a look? Also, future request, reduce star size in Affinity Photo👍 Thanks again, I'll be back!
Exactly what I want to do - but - at 56 seconds in, the menu on the left magically appears - How? When I do Tools - By Color Select, no tool bar appears. GIMP 2.10.36.
Not sure why I am not allowed to color select in GIMP? When I hold my mouse button down, it selects the star(s), but as soon as I release the button, it loses it (the dotted circle lines disappear). Extremely annoying. I seem to have all the exact same settings on my computer screen that are shown in this video, but no dice. Some other setting must be wrong or off. But I cannot figure it out. Let me know if anyone has any ideas, please.
More GIMP please 😍
Aye aye captain! There's more in the works 😊
I second this
Plz more
instaBlaster
thanks for the fantastic clear tutorial and for supporting people who don't have photoshop
I know I am late to the game, just saw this video. I use GIMP for almost all of my processing and this video is extremely helpful. Thank you.
Great video, I've quickly applied to a few of my images and the nebulas are really popping out now, thanks so much for sharing this!
Thank you for taking time to do this. I use GIMP for astro photos and am still new at astro photography (in the modern age) and I appreciate anyone who is sharing knowledge on using GIMP for astro photos. While I have taken many astro photos, I have not learned the methods of processing.. I would like to see something on clipping star images.
Thank you so much for your tutorials on GIMP. I am a newbie both with astrophotography and photo processing. I do not have photoshop so I downloaded GIMP and your tutorials were the only one that really helped me get started. More GIMP tutorials please?
Thanks for the tutorial with GIMP ! AWESOME!!!!
I'm finding Gimp is a great tool since you taught me how to use it. Thank you for sharing your skills.
Thanks for sharing this. Excellent instruction. I was so close to breaking down and purchasing PS for star reduction.
Hey Ruzeen, just wanted to say thanks for making these videos. The GIMP tutorial video, and this one, have helped immensely with my astro photos as I only use GIMIP for processing. My photos are better because of the knowledge you shared!
Thanks for posting. I don't have much artistic flair, so I particularly enjoy your tutorials on using Gimp. I put them in my library and refer back to them often when I'm trying to make the most of my own images.
Thank you so much for the video. This procedure will help me a lot with my pictures.
I really like your style of teaching / explaining what to do, why do it and what to look for to modily the procedure to make the images look the way we want them to look. Nice job.
I’m gonna try it straight away, thanks mate!
Thank you. The information is excellent!
OK, value-propagate is a new idea on me. Good call. I like the result.
Now, if you want two more methods:
1) erode and dilate (one of them spreads darks-into-lights, the other the opposite);
2) wavelet decompose (makes a given number of layers at varying frequencies, ie characteristic object sizes - by adjusting opacities you can control the strength of structures by size eg 10px vs 20px).
HTH :)
Really appreciated this tutorial, thanks.
You're welcome, I'm glad it was useful for you 😊
Thanks this was very helpful! More on Gimp with Astrophotography please!
I know it's not easy figuring this stuff out, so I much appreciate you sharing this technique with everyone. I sometimes dabble with GIMP, you know, as it's free, and I have no doubt this technique will be a valuable resource. Especially for me as I fool around imagine with an achro. As you can imagine a bit of star reduction wouldn't go a miss :) Cheers Ruz, fab tutorial!
Thank matey. Well since I found how to do this I really wanted to pass the info on to everyone else 🙂
Gimp is great in that it's free, such a logical starting point really. Yeah I bet with an achro reducing stars could also possibly help with aberrations as well. Let me know how that works out for you!
Cheers buddy
Thanks man. Keep it up!! This is really great for people that dont have the buget.
Tried this using someone else's tuition. Since then I now simply remove the stars with starnet and de stretch them. I also make adjustments to the brightness and contract. I simply then use addition of layers to put them back in much reduced. I think this works better personally.
Thank you so much for this tutorial, please keep supplying videos to use GIMP for AP editing.
Thanks for your videos on using gimp. This one has really helped me alot, I had no idea how to do a star reduction in gimp, so many people use photoshop and things dont always translate well between the two. Thanks again this helped alot.
Fantastic tutorial , thank you!
Hi Ruzeen this is fantastic! As you know GIMP is my preferred choice so I'll be checking this out again once I am home from the office (going to be a long day lol!) I have an image I want to share with you now that I've gotten better results with 300 sec exposures. I have it on the Bin, I'll send you a link and see what you think.
Good to see you here again and I appreciate you sharing the knowledge!
Love your videos Ruzeen. Just wish you were my neighbour so I could have a private lesson. Keep up the great work 👍
Thanks for the support John! Haha yeah If I was your neighbour then that would have been fun. I've thrown about the thought of private lessons but still giving it consideration
This is really helpful. Many thanks!
Amazing! This really works. Thank you, Ruzeen.😍
thanks a lot for this great tipp! Greatings from Germany
Great video! Did not know about value propagate. Another tip: Ctrl + T shows/hides the selection markings without changing the selection.
Execelent job. Love all your content so far. Cheers for doing all the hard work for us all. Much appreciated
Nice tutorial bud. I haven’t used GIMP before. I’ll have to check this out.
Cheers dude. Yeah GIMP is surprisingly capable that's for sure. Has the added benefit also of being free
Thanks for the great video on using GIMP very helpful. Is this process done after all the traditional, curves, de-noise and sharpen etc or do you recommend somewhere in-between?
Thanks for the comment glad it was helpful.
I'd do this step after my curves and editing my background and DSO. After that is usually do a star reduction then move into denoise and sharpening, with a star reduction towards the end if I so fancy
I appreciate the GIMP tutorials. More please. Do you know if action tools can be added to GIMP similar to that of Carboni's used in PS?
This is great info, thanks👍
My pleasure! Glad it was useful
This gives me hope.
Glad to hear it friend. Good luck! :)
Tutorial is MEGA!!!! Big THX. Have You maby a formula to remove chromatic aberrations in GIMP or another free software?
Great tutorial once again Ruz! More tools to play with, that's IF we ever get a clear night. Thank you! I'm thinking seriously about getting Affinity Photo, would I need to buy anything else? Love the GIMP tutorials, it's all I have now. 👍
Thanks Don
Yeah these cloudy skies really are a bit rife at the moment! But a good reason to go back and edit older data. Great way of seeing improvement 🙂
I've been using Affinity a bit nowadays and I've not noticed the need to purchase any other software, and I think its still on offer. I released an Affinity processing video earlier this week if you didn't catch it. Can watch that if you fancy comparing the two workflows :)
Thank you, really helps me out.
Interesting tutorial. I image with an unmodified DSLR. Will this star reduction work just as easily on broadband images? Thanks Ruz. You have a great channel!
Thanks for this video, this is exactly what I was looking for! I'm sure I'll check out more of your videos because I always use GIMP :)
Great and helpfull video as always! Thanks!
Really nice, thanks!
Really great video Ruz! I've never really got on with gimp, but it may be worth another look. One thing that I find gimp to be really bad at is combining mono images into a colour image. It would be good if you could do a video on that.
Thanks dude and don't you worry. Composite tutorial in the works!
Excellent tutorial. I just watched your previous GIMP tutorial and I am glad you found a practical solution for star reduction. Perhaps you could try Starnet++. It is a bit slow, but it can use GPUs, and altogether will save you a lot of time making your star mask. The mask is so good that starnet++ can even remove the stars and let you work independently on the nebula and on the stars. Also, I noticed in your previous video that you do some manual masking for local adjustments, perhaps you could get the Nik collection plugin, it is well integrated with GIMP and does a great job for all sorts of local selective adjustments (color, contrast, brightness, structure, sharpness, noise). Other plugins to consider: G'MIC (500 filters, including deconvolution and denoise) and the GIMP Astrophotography plugin (outdated but rounds star more effectively than manually shifting masked layers and using "darken only").
You save my life many thanks
Thanks for the video. The other Gimp video has helped me edit some of my images. Question: When in the process would you do this star reduction exercise? After editing all the nebulosity / background and after all the star mask editing (as per previous Video), or before? Or does it not matter. Thank you. Keep up the vids.
Thanks very much for the comment :)
Hmm if I remember I think in the first video I said "now I'd do star reduction but don't know how to". But usually these days if after the initial curves stretching the stars are getting too big, I'd do it sooner.
Usually though after I edit my background and DSO then when I stamp a new layer to carry on, then I'd do my star reduction, with s second pass of reduction - if required - towards the end
Plan to keep up the videos mate got a few more in Gimp planned :)
I've tried ... Wouahou Bro, that's exactly what I was looking for !! ;) GG
Thank you so much!!
Great work here! Would you use the same process and Value Propagate to increase the size/brightness of a star? So the opposite of what you are doing here. Basically my goal would be to simulate a diffuser filter on a lens when taking wide field astro shots.
thanks for that tip works great. I have a question since gimp can work with fits is there any benefit to doing so
Awesome glad to hear its working for you. Hmm,well in theory fits would give you as much data as possible since it's the native file format. But I believe TIFF is effectively lossless anyway. I think most of us use TIFF since it's just what most programs can read. If your computer has the horsepower to edit the stacked fits then by all means I think :) though I believe you'll still need to make sure they're 16/bit depth
Nice magic!!!
I would like to see you editing planetary images please. Thanks
Thanks for GIMP tutorials.. Very few UA-camrs provide those. By the way, do you know any method to brigthen/bloom the bigger stars? Similar to the starglow filter effect.. I mainly do constellation photography and I don't want to invest hundreds of dollars if it can be achieved in post processing.
Damn, this is great, many thanks. Careful of the low-resolution images like from my 450D some stars blur together and the Value Propagate causes streaking between adjoining stars. Still not a major issue though. May well be that my capture time was too long.
Thanks buddy!
That's good info about the resolution and such. Stars blurring due to optical or sensor resolution isn't something I considered so it's good you bought that to light!
😁 I followed your instructions on star reduction but I ended up with weird halo type artifacts. Can I send you the pic I did so you can have a look? Also, future request, reduce star size in Affinity Photo👍 Thanks again, I'll be back!
thank you! :)
My pleasure! :)
Exactly what I want to do - but - at 56 seconds in, the menu on the left magically appears - How? When I do Tools - By Color Select, no tool bar appears. GIMP 2.10.36.
Not sure why I am not allowed to color select in GIMP? When I hold my mouse button down, it selects the star(s), but as soon as I release the button, it loses it (the dotted circle lines disappear). Extremely annoying. I seem to have all the exact same settings on my computer screen that are shown in this video, but no dice. Some other setting must be wrong or off. But I cannot figure it out. Let me know if anyone has any ideas, please.
how to increase star size?
Hello! I know you get notifications when we post, the same question. Can I send you a pic for your review, please? Need your help buddy!
Hey Don sure, send it away with your question :)
Thank you for this but you go much too fast for me.
Hey Ruz, I sent you an email, check your junk again. It's an offer 👍
Great tutorial, thank you!