Image Processing Software for Solar Astrophysics Research

[Camilo160]

Hi everyone, I would like to know what kind of software would you use for do image processing? For example I downloaded some pics from http://sdac.virtualsolar.org/cgi/search as a URL file, actually I have problems for open this kind of files and for obtain the position of the solar spots I am studying, thanks for your help and advices.

 

[rootone]

First thing is that a URL is simply the location of something on the internet, not an actual image file on your computer.

A lot of people use Photoshop for all kinds of image processing, it's quite powerful by itself, but there are thousands of specialised add-ons.
It's quite expensive to get it as a stand alone software, but frequently some version is included as part of the package when you buy a digital camera.
The GIMP is open source (free) software which does almost everything photoshop can do.
There are many other image processing programs out there, some of them also being free at least for trial period.
These tend to be a good at some particular job, (such as removing red-eye from photos,or reducing file size without quality loss), instead of trying to do everything in one package.

 

[Camilo160]

Thanks for your help rootone, May I ask you something more? Do you know something about IDL? The main problem is I should do a common routine in a program like phyton, IDL or others, so a direct use of Photoshop won´t be admisible for my homework.