FITS Liberator

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The ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator

Background

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 Adobe® Photoshop® software can try their hand at crafting astronomical images as beautiful as those from the Hubble Space Telescope. This free software 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 FITS Liberator brought non-professional astronomers the possibility to produce stunning astronomical images that, for 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.

FITS Liberator

Version 2.2 of The ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator has been improved in several areas, some of which are:

  • 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. For more information see http://www.virtualastronomy.org
  • The import of coordinate metadata from the FITS header has been improved

Apart from the great advantages of an interactive workflow, the 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 (color space) in the finished color images. Get more information about the FITS Liberator on this podcast from Adobe.

"The ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator" has been tested in the Softpedia labs using several industry-leading security solutions and found to be completely clean of adware/spyware components.

We kindly ask users to acknowledge the use of this plug-in in publicly accessible products (web, articles, books etc.) with the following statement: "This image was created with the help of the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator".

Requirements

   * Windows PC or Mac (OS X 10.4+);
   * Screen resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels or better;
   * Photoshop 7.0 (or later) or Photoshop Elements 2.0 (or later);
   * Mac: Photoshop CS 3.

The Team

The team that produced the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator consists of: Project Lead: Lars Lindberg Christensen (lars@eso.org) Development Lead: Lars Holm Nielsen Core Functionality: Kaspar K. Nielsen Engine and GUI: Teis Johansen Scientific support: Robert Hurt Technical support and testing: Robert Hurt, Zolt Levay, Bob Fosbury, Richard Hook and Aaron Anderson.

Further Information

For further information on the FITS Liberator, read the PDF article "The ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator 3: Have your say on new features" published on the Communicating Astronomy with the Public 2007 conference proceedings

Acknowledgements

  • FITS is an abbreviation for Flexible Image Transport System and has been a standard since 1982 and is recognized by the International Astronomical Union.
  • The ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator uses NASA’s CFITSIO library.
  • Adobe and Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.

Future Developments

Note: The creation of Fits Liberator 3.0 has started.

We would like to solicit inputs from the community. Please let us know what you would like to see in FL 3.0. Email to lars@eso.org

Limitations by Photoshop version, Photoshop Elements and CS

  • Photoshop CS2, CS3 (32-bit color depth);
  • Photoshop CS (16-bit);
  • Photoshop Elements 3 to Elements 6 (16-bit);
  • Photoshop 7.0 (only 15-bit color, and only partial functionality for more than 8-bit color);
  • Photoshop Elements 2 (only 8-bit color) (Elements 1.0 NOT supported);
  • On Mac only Photoshop CS3 is supported.

Known Issues

Photoshop CS 3, Intel Macs & Vista:

Version 2.1

  • Intel Macs & Photoshop CS3: FL 2.1 should work with Photoshop CS3 if the application is forced to run under Rosetta. The next version will be a universal binary that can run native on Intel Macs and CS3, however a new release is not planned until the winter 2007/2008. To run Photoshop under Rosetta, right-click on the Photoshop application icon in Finder and choose "Get Info". In the opened window, check-mark the option "Open under Rosetta".
  • Concatenator: Under Photoshop CS3 the composite image is too big and can often not be created because of a lack of memory.
  • Windows Vista: There are some painting issues on the Preview page when the main window is initially displayed. Furthermore there are some painting issues with the stretch function and zoom drop down lists.

Note: Issues 1-3 below should have been corrected in version 1.01 that can be downloaded here.

Version 1.0

  • Installation of the plug-in for Windows Elements 2.0 installed in a directory other than the default c:\program files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 2 may have to install the files manually. Read here.
  • File association .fts does not work in Windows. Please rename the file to .fits.
  • Users of Photoshop for other languages may have to install the files manually. Read here. A possible workaround is to write the path to the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Plugins\ in the Photoshop Settings (Plugins and Virtual Memory).
  • Photoshop may have problems opening FITS files in a very deep file hierachy, e.g. c:\Documents and Settings\Jay Beck\My Documents\My Work\Lib\Pictures\Science\Astronomy\Planetary nebula NGC 6881\F555W-u2sa2702t.co.fits . Move the file to a less deep file heirarchy.
  • Photoshop may have problems opening FITS files that reside in directories with brackets - () or [] - in the name. Move the file to directory without brackets.