Writing a piece of software

TPD

Hello everyone!

I've started writing a piece of software, the purpose of which is to amplify the brightness of stars in an image. It mightn't give a very honest representation of the night sky, but rather give a bit more pop to landscapes with starry skies.

My basic idea for how it will work:

• The software scans over the image looking at small parts at a time
• Finds out if the pixels in the centre of the small area are brighter than those around the outside
• Increases the brightness of those above the average brightness of the small area

I was wondering if anybody knew of similar software in existence already?

Tzetze

I don't know of any specific software for that job, but there are action tools available for Photoshop that help automate the process of selecting only stars (you can of course do this without the action tools). You can then boost the saturation and luminance to your taste.

TPD

I've just been playing around with the test build, happy enough with it so far. Some disastrous result can be had depending on the settings used though.

Original image:
http://i.imgur.com/ZvnVtJ6.jpg

Output image: (no 'save as' yet - just saved as the original filename plus '.png')
http://i.imgur.com/THUbUFs.jpg

Output image pasted onto original in photoshop, a .4 pixel gaussian blur applied, and all the non starry sky bits erased with a large soft edge:
http://i.imgur.com/tgUibMS.jpg
(literally a 2 minute job, could have been much more precise with the erasing)


I'll compile the program and upload it if anyone wants to give it a go.

Edit: I've attached a zipped copy of it. Very buggy at the minute, so it will likely crap out on you.
Edit 2: Don't bother downloading that. It's set to open a folder on my desktop to look for images
Edit3: This version (2) should default the 'open file' dialog to C:\