08 Jul 2004

If there is anything that unites astronomy, it is the worldwide use of a single file format - nearly all the images of stars and galaxies produced by telescopes on the ground and in space are stored as so-called FITS files. Unfortunately this file format has been accessible to very few people other than professional scientists using highly specialised image-processing tools.

Now a new and unique tool - the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator - developed by imaging scientists at the European Space Agency, the European Southern Observatory and NASA makes the immense wealth of astronomical images and spectra stored in data archives around the world accessible to the layman. The only thing required is access to either Adobe Photoshop® or Adobe Photoshop Elements®, both leading image software packages.

For the professional creators of astronomical colour images, the plug-in revolutionises the workflow of the creation of colour images from raw data and gives a huge boost to the image quality by giving access to the full 16 bit (65536 colours) range of the observations. In addition the plug in may be used as a powerful educational tool when teaching about light, colour and digital images. Some examples of educational material are available at http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/fitsforeducation.html

The ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator will be released today and is freely available for download from:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator

Head of the development team, Lars Holm Nielsen from Denmark, says, "FITS is much more than just an image format. It is an extremely flexible file format that allows astronomers to share images and spectra in many different ways. This very versatility has made the job of producing a plug-in for Photoshop challenging. Compared to formats like JPEG, FITS files can be incredibly diverse."

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Notes for editors

The ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator works on Windows PCs and Macs (OS X 10.2+) and is optimised for Photoshop CS, but also works in Photoshop 7.0 (only 15 bit support) and Photoshop Elements 2 (only 8 bit support).

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 team that produced the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator consists of:

Project Leader: Lars Lindberg Christensen
Development Leader: Lars Holm Nielsen
Graphical Interface Programming: Kasper K. Nielsen
I/O programming: Teis Johansen
Technical, scientific support and testing: Robert Hurt, Zolt Levay, Bob Fosbury and Richard Hook.

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.

Image credit: ESA, ESO and NASA  

Contacts

Lars Lindberg Christensen
Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre, Garching, Germany
Tel: +49 (0)89-3200-6306
Cellular (24 hr): +49-(0)173-3872-621
E-mail: larseso.org

Lars Holm Nielsen
Tel: +45-32­88-6866
Cellular: +45-2215-5180
E-mail: larshankat.dk

Robert L. Hurt SIRTF
Science Center, IPAC, Caltech, Pasadena, USA
Tel: +1-626-395-1825
E-mail: hurtipac.caltech.edu

Zolt Levay
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA
Tel: +1-410-338-4907
E-mail: levaystsci.edu