Make your Milky Way images pop

Simple, free processing techniques using FastStone Image Viewer

- Mary Mcintyre

Capturing images of the night sky is only half of the battle. Processing them is an equally important step and, for beginners, this part can feel overwhelming - especially as much of the image-editing software out there isn't particularly intuitive to use.

It’s frustrating to shell out money on a program that you then struggle to get the most out of. Luckily, there are several free or low-cost options to try, such as FastStone Image Viewer, a free image-browsing and editing tool that's compatible with Windows. You can download the latest version from www.faststone.org. It has many of the tools required for astro processing in a package that's easy to navigate, and it lets you quickly browse through your raw files, as well as other common file formats. It can also convert a batch of images from one file type to another.

First steps