For many years astronomical images from the world’s telescopes were reserved for an elite of astronomers and technical people. Now anyone with a desktop computer running PhotoShop software can try their hand at crafting astronomical images as beautiful as those from the Hubble Space Telescope. 

The ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator plug-in, makes a treasure trove of archival astronomical images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and many other famous telescopes accessible to home astronomy enthusiasts.

The first version of the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator brought amateur astronomers the possibility to produce beautiful astronomical images that, for many years, had only been the privilege of the scientific community.

With the advent of the FITS Liberator v.2, it became possible for people at home to create even more spectacular pictures like the iconic Hubble image “Pillars of Creation” in a matter of minutes.

Apart from the great advantages of an interactive workflow, the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator enables creation of images with improved quality as the many greyscales in the original observations are preserved. This gives added detail in the shadows and an increased gamut (colour space) in the finished colour images.

Requirements:

· Windows PC
· Screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels or better
· Photoshop 7.0 (or later)

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· Universal Binary for Mac allows native CS3 operation on Intel-based systems.
· Flip image checkbox allows image orientation to be selected on import.
· Root functions (x^1/2, x^1/3, x^1/4, x^1/5) now operate symmetrically about x=0.
· Version 1.1 of the Astronomy Visualization Metadata (AVM) standard is now fully supported.
· The import of coordinate metadata from the FITS header has been improved