Introduction
AstroFlat Pro is an Adobe® Photoshop® compatible 8BF style filter plug-in that works as part of your image editor to help you flatten the background luminance levels in your astroimages.
This plug-in categorizes subject and background luminance levels and colors per your inputs. This is done quickly, while you are changing the controls, so that the results are shown in near real-time. You should be able to easily judge when you've reached just the right settings.
We've intentionally tried to keep the number of controls to a minimum, to make the plug-in easy to use. Here's an overview of all you need to do:
- Move the Smoothness slider to be high enough to where all your deep sky objects are visible but the sky glow has not yet started to show.
- To make the result easier to see and judge, check the [ ] Enhance Preview box.
- Once you have chosen a good Smoothness value, if the edges of the image are too dark or light, change the Edge Cleanup slider until the edges look good.
- Finally, bring up the Dark Noise Reduction value until you like what you see. You may prefer to use less Dark Noise Reduction if there are dark nebulae in the image.
In other words, just tweak the control values until your image looks best to you!
That's it!