I’m confused.. why would we expect some other image processing software to be better than Photoshop - a software package which has been the top of its class for ~30 years?
Because photoshop it not open source, not verifiable, and not documented on a scientific level about how its filters behave.
Eh, it's been pretty tested. Any person can easily apply filters and verify the change in image properties and see how filters behave.
Why would they worry about that? These colored images aren't used for science, they're meant for marketing.
They're not doing science with photoshop. They're creating assets for consumption by the public.
> open source
This is not a criterion of high quality software.
The filters used are just simple compositions -- making monochrome images colored and adding them together, so that scientists can distinguish different types of gas and dust via color coding.