From: "Tim" <tjp314@pacbell.net>
Date: November 9, 2005 5:19:33 PM MST
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Camera for guiding
--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, "David Illig" <yag@d...> wrote:
Photoshop? But I agree -- the Mac needs a Registax, but with a human interface; using
Registax is a torturous process.
David
David:
As a professional, I've used Photoshop since version 1.6. It's a great program, but it's
rather expensive (and nowadays, you can't install it on more than one computer, whereas
before you just couldn't RUN it on more than one computer at a time).
For home use, particularly on my PC so far, I've downloaded the GIMP (http://
www.gimp.org/), which has many photoshop functions but is free. It's available for Mac
OS X as well, but I've not been able to get it to install on my new Powerbook with 10.4 yet
(get a "needs X11" message, but I can't install that from Apple due to another error I get
but can't recall at the moment).
As far as Registax on the Mac. I've used Registax on my PC with my ToUcam Pro for the
past few years before I saw the note in S&T about Astro IIDC. Since it became available,
I've not taken the ToUcam out of the box, though for the first few months, I had only an
Aplux firewire camera to work with.
I've experimented with processing videos taken with the color Flea camera and processed
in Astro IIDC, versus Registax 3 (after exporting as AVI files and running Registax via
Virtual PC on my Mac), and I will say that I get much better quality images via Astro IIDC
than I can with Registax. I haven't tried the video software that shipped with the camera,
though (for PCs), and it is possible that the results might differ that way.
Over all, though, I find Astro IIDC to be more user-friendly and capable than Registax, so
I've not felt much of a pull to fall back on Registax since I really got serious with the Flea
and Astro IIDC.
-Tim.