I've taken a look at some earlier iterations of Astro Panel over the years, a plug-in designed for automating and enhancing both astrophotography and landscape photos. I found it a powerful addition to my editing arsenal, and it was easy to use but could do some very sophisticated editing. This new version from photographer Angelo Perrone adds more than 80 new astrophotography and landscape functions, as well as some features to support portrait editing.
Recently, I stopped using the plug-in as it did not work with Apple Silicon Macs (it does work fine with Windows). Finally, and happily, the latest Astro Panel X Pro embraces the newest chips from Apple, and I did my testing on both a MacBook Pro with an M2 Max chip (12 cores and 32 GB unified memory) and a new Mac Studio with an M2 Max with 12‑core CPU, 38‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine, and 96 GB of unified memory.
Astro Panel Pro X requires Photoshop CC and is only compatible with Adobe Photoshop CC from 2021 to the current 2023 version and, as I said, it is compatible with the new Apple Mac M1/M2 processors and Windows.
Installation is a couple of clicks, and the suite of tools appears under the Photoshop plug-in menu, not the filter menu.
What You Get
Included in the purchase are some e-books (How to Photograph the Night Sky, Landscape Photography, and a PDF Manual). Also included are raw files so you can follow along with the training and overlay files in JPEG and PNG of skies and night skies to use with your photos. Also included are 25,000 Lightroom presets and a good video tutorial available online with a provided link. Coming soon to buyers is a retouch and portrait tutorial.
The package is $56 U.S., but prices tend to fluctuate as the author has sales and upgrades for users of older packages.
Using Astro Panel Pro X
When you open the plug-in, you'll see it's divided into two sections, Astrophotography and Landscape.
I started with some astrophotos I've taken recently, including the star cluster M13 I grabbed the other night.
I'm mostly a deep sky photographer, so I concentrated on those tools. There are a lot of one-click options that are time-savers, like removing the green cast in photos caused by light pollution. There are methods to remove gradients, reduce bright star halos, reduce stars in nebula photos, and enhance star colors. I found the functions worked well, and happily, there was an undo menu and a redo menu. Many of the functions in AstroPanel Pro X create a new layer, leaving you with plenty of control.
The app also includes some nice features for Milky Way processing, including removal of light pollution, enhancing color, and increasing sharpness. Star trails are covered as well, with the ability to increase star colors, increase sharpness, and remove distortion.
On the landscape side, there's a wide variety of tools, such as fixing white balance, sharpening, noise removal, increasing sharpness and contrast, shadow and highlight recovery, Orton and glow effects (I found these very nicely restrained but effective), dodge and burn tools, and tools to fix the geometry of panoramas.
Of course, all these things can be accomplished on Photoshop or Lightroom, but the automation here is quite slick and time-saving. With many of the tools, you can control the amount of the change and undo when needed. Think of Astro Panel Pro X as a sort of sophisticated macro generator with sliders and controls that let you decide the amount of some of the effects.
Astro Panel X Pro offers luminosity masks, and tools like Forward and Back, the Quick White Mask, Curve Level and Tonal Values, White Brush, and Black Brush. Hue/Saturation and Color Balance have been optimized compared to the previous version.
With these tools used together, you get very complete control of lighting for landscape photography, and for some, these tools alone may justify a serious look at this package.
My View
Astro Panel Pro X has been significantly improved over previous versions. While, as I've said, some functions are one click, there is a learning curve when you get into luminosity masks and some of the other advanced functions, but if you take the time to watch the tutorials and go through the electronic manual, you'll have a set of powerful tools you will use in every editing session.
I found the app stable and crash-free, working on both the release version of Photoshop and the new beta. It also behaved well under the beta of macOS Sonoma 14.0.
I think the only thing I'd like to see are tool tips for each functions, as sometimes, the icons aren't obvious in what they do.
At $56, I think Astro Panel Pro X is a bargain. Just the extensive guidebooks to night sky photography and landscape photography are worth that.
If you are willing to dive into the documentation and use the many features, Astro Panel Pro X is a really good investment. It's available for purchase at this website, where you'll get more details on what it can do for your astro and earthbound images.
I purchased Astro Panel X a month back I found that it has many bugs, I reached out to support and they asked for a video which I sent and no answer for a couple of weeks so I messaged them and was told an update is coming. I waited about a week and messaged again asking why no replies to my email with the video showing the problems. I had a rude reply saying that “It's a few bugs that don't affect the user experience and post-production workflow.” Also saying that I sent dozens of emails, and that I commented on all their posts. I only sent one follow up email and commented on one post. The bugs make my workflow impossible. Very poor support and many bugs.
Hi Stephen
I repeat it below in the comments. We are working to fix some bugs in both the CEP and UXP versions. When updates are available, go mail.
Hi John
Astro Panel X Pro is compatible with Adobe Photoshop CC from 2021 to 2023. This update works on both Windows and Mac.
We also told you in chat but you told us that we wanted to scam you when all our video tutorials are made on the windows platform.
I have the Astro Panel Pro 6.02 Never could get it installed. Also, I find the Plugin panel part of Photoshop to be difficult to learn, It's like a program within a program. If you don't use them very often then they are hard to work with. Waste of time and money for me.
Hi Leon,
From the 5th version of astro panel pro there is my ebook "How to Photograph Night Sky". In the ebook there are learning tutorials how to use perfectly Astro Panel.
Some customers use direclty the panel without learn from video tutorials or ebook.
The commands of the panel are in chronological order for optimal workflow.
See our ebook and apply the techniques in your workflow.
Best Regards
While the panel itself is a valuable tool for astro, the customer service provided by its owner, Angelo Perrone, is extremely disappointing (see all comments on this article for more disappointed customers). Despite reporting bugs in the previous version, which was less than a year old, he did not deliver the promised fixes. Instead, he released a paid update for the V2 panel, which should have included the previous fixes for free. My attempts to communicate with him have been ignored, leaving me frustrated and considering a refund through my bank. In light of this poor customer service, I strongly advise against purchasing this product. Angelo will not come through! Oh, and he’ll charge you for a PDF on how to use the panel too. Good luck!
I just want to preface this by saying that negative feedback of a product or business isn’t a personal attack, but rather an opportunity to improve one’s customers’ experiences. That said:
The plug-in has been useful but after looking back I realize I’ve bought 3 or 4 versions of the darn thing every few months since first hearing about it here on FStoppers in 2021/2022 (iirc). I feel like a rube, frankly.
The “X Pro” version cited in the article just launched a little over two months ago, but this past week my email inbox has been flooded with emails telling me I need to buy the life-changing “X V.2” which I guess is an update to “X” which I also had already bought six months prior at the end of 2022.
But now “X V.2” looks more feature-rich than “X Pro” which is weird to me, for the obvious reasons of it being the “Pro” version of “X” and having been launched barely two months ago.
My guy, you’re obviously a good software developer, but this isn’t the way to do business my friend. You’re making Luminar’s software lifecycle seem like it takes eons by comparison. I’m happy to keep supporting your plug-in, but don’t try to get me to re-buy it every couple of months.
EDIT:
After stumbling around astropanel’s website some more, it appears (assuming that I read correctly) that the (soon to be) only difference between “X V.2” and “X Pro” is Mac M1/M2 support, as the new features added in “X V.2” are listed as “coming soon” for “X Pro”. That’s the only time within memory that an update for this plugin wasn’t just a paid purchase of an entirely new standalone version. Gawd help me if he tries to charge for it, and the update sure as heck better launch soon to keep from wasting brand equity. There have never been free bug fixes or Version 1.2 or 2.2 updates released within my memory, btw. He only seems to release brand new full-number versions (he’s on 7 or 8 or 9 now).
It used to be that the differentiator between the two was that “X” was Astro-only and “X Pro” added extra portrait retouching features. But now the dude has wiped out his product differentiation and the only alleged differentiator is M1/M2 support.
Which… why would anyone have to pay extra for that? I certainly haven’t seen any other software suite charge customers an extra 40% for otherwise identical software because they run one system over the other. Ironically currently M2 owners or M1 owners who want a native app have to pay an extra 40% for software that has LESS features than its cheaper non-Apple Silicon sibling.
Dude. Just… dude.
And don’t fret, the software is not and has never been €199.90, that’s just price anchoring to trigger your FOMO reflex. In fact, if you sign up for emails you’ll receive sometimes daily discount offers anytime a new version is released, with discounts ranging from 50%-70% off of the permanently listed “sale” prices.
To his credit, it appears that he once gave away free updates from Version 5 to “Pro” (Version 6) but it’s unclear if there was anything different with the plugin itself.
But, again, to appeal to the software developer: constructive criticism, you release too many paid upgrades too often. I’d rather pay more upfront and get proper ongoing support than have to re-buy the entire plugin every time a bug is fixed or a new feature is released. The bloatware you package with it, such as ebooks and presets, don’t actually add that much value. It’s like when you buy a camera off Amazon and the seller throws in a bunch of cheap lens filters to sweeten the deal. You’re a good software developer and your app works well, however your marketing strategy feels like it was borrowed from 2-bit get-rich-quick schemers or a pickup artist’s “limited time only” webinar.
Tighten things up, man. Consolidate into a single version, and provide people some ongoing support. You want to keep your customers long term; astrophotography is a small community and if you support your customers we’ll support you. The last thing you should do is turn people off like is happening with me.
This company is unorganized and the software is garbage. Look at Pro Panel, Much better and better website and videos!