This is an Early Access Beta* release. If anything unusual happens or you don’t like the way something works, please send an email to help@astroeditapp.com explaining what you were doing when the issue occurred. As we make improvements, new versions will be released free through the Apple App Store. To paraphrase former President Kennedy, ” We do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it was easy.”

Tap the leftmost icon and select an image to process.

Trim the image to reduce size or remove ugly stacking and field rotation artifacts

Once you’re happy with your edits, tap the down arrow box in the top menu. You will save a new version of the original image (which won’t be changed). 

Tap left arrow icon to undo your last edit. Tap right arrow icon to redo edit  

App version and this user guide.

Exposure – adjust overall brightness

Saturate – Enhance the color

Temp – Create a warmer or cooler look

Tint – Refine hue by adding white

Hue – Changes base pure color

The histogram displays the distribution of dark (left) and bright (right) pixels. The higher the peak the more pixels are that brightness. Click a point and drag the slider for precise brightness adjustment. Point 1 will brighten the left 20% of the curve. Point 5 will brighten the right 20% of the curve

Enhances the crispness of details. Control the amount of sharpening for each layer with the slider. “S” sharpens tiny details such as stars. “XXL” sharpens large details such as entire nebulae

The slider controls how much of an effect is applied

AI Noise removes noise artifacts (grain)

AI Star reduces/removes stars

AI Gradient removes gradient lights

AI Satellite removes streaks created by satellites and aircraft

• Tap the screen and hold to show the original image. Release to continue editing

• Double-tap the screen to cancel all edits and restart from the original image

• Use 2-finger-spread to zoom

A typical workflow will start with an overall brightness adjustment perhaps with help from the curve tool to brighten just parts of the image. Gradients, if any, will typically be revealed so fix that and then use the AI Denoise to remove grain. Some images have so many stars they distract from your target, so you can use the AI Star tool to reduce or even remove them. Finally, you may want to tweak the color and saturation before saving your image to the Apple Photos library.


*This early access beta software is a pre-release version of AstroEdit that we’re making available to you before its official launch. It represents a development stage where the software is feature-complete but may contain bugs and performance issues. The main purposes of early access beta software are:

  • Gathering user feedback and bug reports
  • Testing features with real users
  • Identifying usability issues
  • Refining the product before the final release

As refinements are made, new versions will be available free on the Apple App Store.