NASA uses Photoshop. I thought so.

[Heel n Toe]

This is one of those things that I always kinda wondered about and thought was probably the case when we all started seeing those colorful deepspace photos of nebulae, but I never looked into it.

Recently, I discovered quora.com, where people go to ask and answer all kinds of questions about all kinds of things.

And there it was... somebody had asked... and it was answered by someone who worked at NASA. Kinda ticks me off. I wonder how many people believe in this fabricated bedazzlement? Our gubmint selling us lies for money. Harrumph.

Does NASA use Photoshop?

Kaz Vorpal, Former NASA contractor

I worked at NASA, in charge of the rework of the Hubble Space Telescope's website. At that time, they heavily used Photoshop, and other graphics tools, to manipulate the kind of space images you're talking about.

This did not just involve cleaning up an image, or stitching some together, or adding marks to show where something was. It also included altering the fundamental way images looked, to make them prettier, more desirable, and so on.

In fact, many of the most beautiful graphics that NASA uses as its hallmarks, to drum up support, are in this sense largely fake. The famous Eagle Nebula pic (I'll attach a version of it), for example, was originally greyscale, the colorization is completely human-added.

So its award-winning beauty, the staple go-to promotional tool of the Office of Public Outreach, is just a PR gimmick.

This is consistent with what I learned about NASA, in general. The sole focus of every part of the organization I encountered was to profit through increased funding, using whatever means was necessary, including PR gimmicks. They spent a small fortune on a tool to "measure the ozone layer" that added no useful information at all. When I asked why, I was told that having an astronaut pointing an instrument through a shuttle window at the earth, useless though it may be, was a great photo op, to boost funding. The concept of Fear Equals Funding was rife there, as well as an obsession with making sure nothing was done too fast or efficiently, to ensure that budgets were always used up, preferably that projects fell short, even if they could have been done with money to spare.

This image's beauty is through colors added by humans, through Photoshop or some other tool. The real thing would look nothing like this.




Somebody please Photoshop that and change it to very dark blue & white. It will be just as beautiful, IMO.

[Arizona_928]

The right side looks like badly developed film.

[Holger]

The stars look so bad! It is like on those crappy howling wolves t-shirts.


I hope you are not surprised!

They get sharpest images from far-far-far-away galaxies but cannot make a clear photo of objects in our solar system? (I THINK I wrote something similar in another thread: "it is a big waste of money!" and got a harsh answer from someone working in this area.)
It is (partial) fake to get the money! The deciders are bedazzled and convinced because they know nothing about the reality.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Originally Posted by Heel n Toe

Kaz Vorpal, Former NASA contractor

I was told that having an astronaut pointing an instrument through a shuttle window at the earth, useless though it may be, was a great photo op, to boost funding.

No Buck Rogers, no bucks.

[DanielDudley]

Common knowledge. What else don't you know ?

[911_Dude]

Told like a graphics artist that has no knowledge of who he/she works for.

[Jim Richards]

This isn't the worst thread of the year, but we should give ol' Heel n Toe an "atta boy!" for trying.

[sc_rufctr]

I'm not surprised. Anything interesting is so far away and in our dark sky there's very little color in the visible spectrum.

[masraum]

I'm not saying that it's not true, but I'm also saying, before you take the post as gospel, think about the source. An anonymous user on the net who says that they worked for NASA. It could be the case, or it could totally be a 13 year old troll.

In Astrophotography, post processing is everything, but that doesn't necessarily mean inventing data where there was none. Sometimes, it's more about greatly enhancing what little data is there. It's also not unusual to crank the saturation WAY up to bring out the colors that were in the original image, but not visible or maybe just barely visible.

There may be many elements of truth to the post, but it could be that some elements are incorrect, whether that's due to human error or maliciousness, we'll probably never know.

[onewhippedpuppy]

I've never seen anything like the picture above come out of NASA.

[sc_rufctr]

I don't think it's sinister. Only one question is important.

Were they trying to deceive the public?

[Shaun @ Tru6]

As expected, Kaz, who used to be Michael Karl, is a huge douche bag. I'm guessing he's a lonely fellow. But he has something important to say damn it!

https://www.quora.com/profile/Kaz-Vorpal

[wdfifteen]

That's a still from a Poo Pourrii commercial.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

The thing that sucks about the Internet is people use it.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by masraum

I'm not saying that it's not true, but I'm also saying, before you take the post as gospel, think about the source. An anonymous user on the net who says that they worked for NASA. It could be the case, or it could totally be a 13 year old troll.

In Astrophotography, post processing is everything, but that doesn't necessarily mean inventing data where there was none. Sometimes, it's more about greatly enhancing what little data is there. It's also not unusual to crank the saturation WAY up to bring out the colors that were in the original image, but not visible or maybe just barely visible.

There may be many elements of truth to the post, but it could be that some elements are incorrect, whether that's due to human error or maliciousness, we'll probably never know.

This.

Sure they use Photoshop, any professional that works with an image uses it.

We use Photoshop as the last step in our image production of aerial photography. We never go above 18,000 feet and that is pretty rare. 90% or our images are below 5,000 feet, certainly not light years away like NASA. We have to adjust the curves and color balance of virtually every image from the mapping camera. Even the oblique angle stuff we shoot with a Nikon D3 is tweaked for color and contrast to make it look better. It does not change the fundamentals of what the picture is showing.

[tadd]

Come on, of course the images are colored! Most of the emission spectra is outside of the human viewing window. We only see a tiny bit of the EM spectrum.

I'd like the 'internet guy' to enjoy a microwave or radio image of a binary star... Geeze...

Nothing wrong with shifting to a false color spectrum, e.g. 10 m band is red, 8 m band is orange, ect.

Its not like they add features...

[herr_oberst]

[Shaun @ Tru6]

^^^^

That is so fake. Everyone knows this is what space looks like.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Since we seem to have a lot of suckers here, I have a Nigerian prince friend that could use a little help with transferring a large sum of money. He will give you a very fair cut.......

[wdfifteen]

^^
Has it been Photoshopped? 'Cause that would be wrong.