When I first joined AstroBin this was the first group I looked up hoping to find tips and tricks to be as frugal as possible. Every dollar counts when it's just my hobby. I think everyone here would agree that in general Astrophotography isn't cheap, but there are certainly ways to squeeze more detail out of your images without breaking the bank. I think software is an easy place to cut cost, especially starting out. I'm only a few years in now and these are the applications I use, and all of them are free!  (no particular order)
- DeepSkyStacker (DSS) - Everyone here probably already knows what this is, but just in case... Use this to stack your images, to reduce noise and increase your dynamic range for further post processing. It's very important to use calibration frames and there are many great tutorials out there. Here's one video that got me started.
- GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) - This is a great alternative to Photoshop (PS) if you don't want to pay Adobe $240 per year. I won't say it's equivalent to PS but it has many comparable features and you can get by just fine with this alternative. There are many open source plugins to expand it's capability and many guides and videos online to learn from. I use it for stretching the levels, adjusting colors, masking and controlling different parts of the image using layers.
- G'MIC-Qt plugin for GIMP - This plugin has a ton of tools that I haven't tried yet, but I found the ability to stack layers to reduce noise very effective. I used this in my Gruene Blue Super Moon image for example. I know my camera has the most dynamic range at ISO 1600 and it was so bright that I cranked the shutter speed up to 1/4000. The resulting frames were very noisy, so I took 10 identical frames captured in 1 second and stacked them to reduce the noise.
- Darktable - This is a photography workflow application and is great for managing RAW images. I use it for many things, but I frequently use it to:
- Open RAW images in GIMP if needed.
- Bulk exporting all your RAW images to TIFF (required by some other applications).
- Bulk applying the same adjustments to all your frames using styles.
- Color grading in some ways is better in Darktable than GIMP, so I usually do my initial stretch of the data in GIMP, than move into Darktable for a finer tuning. On some images I go back and fourth a few times to get it right.
- The Lens Correction tool was a life saver for a few of my older images. I could not figure out how to fix the terrible vignetting that I was getting even after my calibration frames. I looked up my lens in the tool and it quickly and easily corrected it.
- I love the Velvia effect too... easily enhances the colors in the image.
- AutoStakkert v3 (AS!3) - Great tool for stacking images (or using frames from a video file) of the moon, sun or planets. Any distortion caused by poor seeing conditions and turbulence when using high magnification can be improved by stacking several of your sharpest frames. Tutorials here.
- StarNet - StarNet was a game changer for me and I wish someone told me sooner. I'm going through my old data now and improving all my images. Use this tool to remove the stars from your image and reveal the beautiful nebula behind them. After removing the stars, I open the original and new images as layers in GIMP to adjust the nebulosity and stars separately. It's a plugin for PixInsight which is not free, but you can still use the standalone tool without buying PixInsight.
- Black Magic DaVinci Resolve - This is high end movie production video editing software with incredible color grading, camera tracking and many expensive tools in the free version. I know many here won't be video editing but figured I'd include it since you can now upload videos in AstroBin. Time to share your timelaps and star trail videos!!!
- Astrospheric - I use this phone app to check the weather in different locations to plan my photography trips to remote locations. You can use the free version, but I chose to pay the couple bucks to save favorite locations and get alerts when the weather meets the conditions I set.
- Stellarium - This also has a phone app that helps a ton when trying to find the object I'm trying to photograph.
- In-The-Sky.org - Is a great site to search all the different catalogs for ideas of what to shoot. For beginners sake, when looking for bright nebula to photograph, find an object with a low magnitude number. lower = brighter
***PLEASE!!! Share any additional applications you've found that are free to help everyone out.***
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You can add N.I.N.A for image capture
https://nighttime-imaging.eu/ |
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Siril for stacking: https://siril.org/ |
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NINA looks great! I've never tried it before. Curious if I can use this with any of my basic equipment. I don't have any autoguide scope, auto focus or other gear yet, but they're on the wishlist. I'm not even sure if I can connect my camera to my computer 
Thanks for sharing! I'll be checking this out for sure.
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Siril for stacking: https://siril.org/
Nice! Thanks for sharing! Do you prefer this over DSS?
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Also Astro Photography Tool (APT) for acquisition: https://astrophotography.app/ .
Strictly speaking it is not free (but quite cheap), however the freely downloadable "demo" version has most of the features activated and without expiration.
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As a Mac user my choices are more limited, however I have been using DSS for long time (on a virtual machine) then Lynkeos (for planets only) and finally I converted to Siril. IMO the latter is pretty good at registration/stacking and some preliminary processing (the auto stretch function and color calibration using photometry work really well).
For acquisition I have been using SharpCap (again on VM) until AstroDMX (which is native on Mac as well as on other platforms) was published. I really like it.
I would add imageJ/Fiji (https://imagej.nih.gov) to the list of free processing software: it has a number of different registration and processing options that are sometime useful (such as registering on planetary shapes but with rotation, not only shift, which can be used on Saturn, for example). It can be scripted and it is multi-platform.
BTW: starnet also works with Siril.
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Han Klein’s ASTAP for calibration, stacking, photometry, astrometry, CCD inspector and so much more.
Just to say Cyril Richard and Siril Team have produced a suite of processing tools in latest version of Siril to rival PI and others.
Also Astronomy tools for framing, checking image scale, imaging combos etc.
Astrosharp from Deepskydetail offers a free alternative to BlurX and similar AI tools in PI.
Finally, whilst graciously and freely given to the Astro community, many of the developers provide opportunity to make a donation, ‘buy a cup of coffee’, which is welcome.
For low cost alternatives, take a look at Startools v9 - a hugely powerful but logical, sequential, and complete processing package with powerful tools and intelligent noise reduction. Free demo, support for those who cannot afford the $45 AUS - IMHO amazing value for money.
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Wow, thank you everyone! I have some homework to do.
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