I am not doing astronomy but Photoshop is useful to analyze any kind of image. You can manipulate contrast, apply all sorts of filters, map a color palette, etc

I am not doing astronomy but Photoshop is useful to analyze any kind of image. You can manipulate contrast, apply all sorts of filters, map a color palette, etc... All that using a user-friendly interface. It is very mature software used by millions of people, for general purpose image work, no custom tool will come close. I guess that scientists will also use specialized software for fine analysis, but it doesn't make Photoshop useless.