Known issues and FAQ

Known issiues in 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.

Known issues in 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 heirachy.
Photoshop may have problems opening FITS files that reside in directories with brackets - () or [] - in the name. Move the file to directory without brackets.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

6. Q: Why did you choose to support Photoshop?

A: We chose Photoshop for a variety of reasons:

Photoshop is a state-of-the-art image processing package and is in our opinion the best available.
Photoshop is widely accepted as 'industry standard' for professional graphics artists.
Photoshop CS works completely natively with 16 bit files. Most astronomical observations are 16 bits or more, so before we could not exploit the full dynamic information in the images. The 16 bits we have access to now has a great impact on quality of the colour images that are composed.
Photoshop has a large development community and the software is therefore always in rapid development.

If you do not want to use Photoshop there is a free java image package that can read FITS images called ImageJ. It's based on the older NIH Image program from the 90's and is free: http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/ . To our knowledge this is the only cross-platform completely free software that handles FITS files.

We do not have plans to support GIMP, PaintShop Pro or others. For Linux users it should also be possible to run Photoshop, see this article.

5. Q: After downloading and trying the FITS Liberator, I was wondering if there existed a similar, easy, image-alignment tool.

A: Good point. To our knowledge it does not exist for Photoshop, although it would be an obvious place to have it here. The tool we use is Registar. We are investigating whether it is feasible to develop a registration tool for Photoshop. Follow, or participate in, the development by checking the draft specifications for v.2 that will soon be available in the menu to the left.

4. Q: Photoshop CS is too expensive. Are there other options?

A: You can also use Photoshop Elements 2.0. It costs around 99$, Note: it does only support 8 bit (which should be enough in most cases).

3. Q: The Photoshop action script does not download as expected on a Mac.

A: You have to "save linked file as", i.e. Alt-click on the file.

2: Q: I seem to have problems installing the plug-in with a non-English Photoshop.

A: Indeed. We are aware of this and are working on a solution.

1. Q: Are you planning on releasing the source code?

A: In most cases the answer would be that we are not allowed to do this due to our contract with Adobe Systems. There is however a possibility to perhaps share code if you apply for, and become, an Adobe SDK developer. Note that we have used NASA's CFITSIO for the FITS routines and these are public.