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.