Digiscoping
Help,
Advice & Lessons for All!

So, I just bought a new computer. 

Have not got it up and running yet.

Hopefully by the end of the month I will have had enough time to pull it out and get it all set up.

The good news is I also bought Photoshop I bought the CS6 extended version. 

I have not had any aftermarket photo editing software to work with as of yet. Just the stuff that comes pre loaded on the computer.

This should be interesting. I have seen what the software can do, but the operator has to know how to make the software do it.

So, the question is, what tools have you guys, (as digiscopers) found to be most valuable in photoshop?

I remember when Danny took one of my pics and edited it in photoshop and it made a difference. 

It is really something I should have done long ago, but I wanted to upgrade my confuser before I dumped all that money on software.

I am sure I will have a ton of "digiscoping specific" questions once I start getting into it.

If your camera supports it I'd shoot in RAW, when digiscoping I never had the option because I was a cheapo but my god RAW is such a god send, it has saved so many of my photos from being okay to awesome. The reason I say this is because CS6 has excellent software to edit raw files and CS6 is what I use, I find it so easy to use and the results I can obtain are great.

When I edited in JPEG, I didn't fool around much, I only applied sharpening and noise reduction and if suffered from chromatic abberation I used this.

I know alot of people use the clone stamp tool, I have only ever used it to hide spots or dirt marks and never to remove and object.

Yeah, I got photoshop installed today. 

I have been playing around with it for a few minutes. ( turned into hours and hours! )

I noticed that you can open the raw files in a seperate mode, (raw editing mode) before you go into the full photoshop mode.

You are right! That thing is amazing! I would have never thought you could do that much with a photo.

I was confused beyond all recognition at one point, thanks to training videos on Adobe's web page, I figured out how to use a few things. 

It almost feels like cheating. I have spent soooo much time trying to get my pics to come out looking good at the camera level. Then there is this "tool" that aloows me to fix my mistakes instantly.  Crazy!

I tried the clone stamp tool, could not figure out what it was trying to do. 

I tried lots of buttons. Mostly I just made my pictures worse. But thats how I am going to learn what each of them does.

I am looking forward to learning to use the layers. It seems to be adding layers without me even trying. The thing I need to learn is how to add layers intentionally.

Just the Raw editing ability is going to be a huge tool. But the real fun should be found inside the rest of the program.

My brain hurts. Between the new confuser and the new software, I am on learning overload.

All that I know at this point is, the internet videos make it look so simple. But when you try to do it yourself, its slow and frustrating.

You will get used to it, believe me, if I can you will have no problem.

and eh, I only consider it cheating if I am removing objects from the photo (partly because I don't know how). You got to look at it this way, all professional wildlife shots will have had some post processing, even the photos taken with quadruple figure lenses.