I’m slowly getting out of my comfort zone and starting to tinker with a number of image processing software packages. Throw in the fact that I got fed up with Windows Vista and switched to Ubuntu Linux and you can see where this is going. That said, this hasn’t been anywhere near as scary as I thought it might be. I’ve found a number of applications that run natively on Linux. A few others run quite well under Wine or CrossOver Linux.

• My new favorite is GIMP. I’ve known about this program for a number of years as a number of friends use it regularly. This is a full featured image manipulation tool that is comparable to Adobe Photoshop, but is available for… free If you’ve done any image processing, you’ll quickly fine the functions you’re looking for.
• Another must have is RegiStax. This program will take a number of single image and stack these to produce an image comparable to a long exposure shot. This allows you to go much deeper after those faint fuzzies. It also has the ability to pull individual frames from a .avi video file. This is the way to go for acquiring highly detailed planetary images.
• Neat Image is a filter designed to reduce noise in digital images.

Ok… I think I’ve gone completely out of my mind now… I finished up the year with the purchase of a new Apple iMac. To say that this is a sweet machine is the understatement of the year. This is a mind blowing machine. To start, it’s got a 24″ flat screen… dual core 2.8Ghz, 4GB of ram and 1TB of disk. It’s also got headers, side pipes and a dual turbo charger. Smokin!

• Back to an old favorite, Adobe Photoshop (CS2). This is an updated version from my Winders days. The mac version (and time) have really polished this nicely