Wet weather NGC 253

[Peter Ward]

To be fair, our garden sorely needs the rain....and this is consistent with my long held theory that rain or cloud is associated with the new moon. :)

I digress.

A recent NASA APOD linked to an image that had been processed using the APF-R technique (see Google) . Seeing it's raining in these parts, I figured this processing technique was worth a look.

It seems to be a photoshop wavelet process. In any event, I gave it a go on some not-too-crappy data I had....

The link to the resulting re-pro is here (http://www.atscope.com.au/BRO/gallery440.html)

I think the technique has merit...and intend to explore it further!

[multiweb]

As Deadpool would say "maximum effort!". That's a truck load of layers. :eyepop: The end result looks good though. :thumbsup:

[phomer]

Wow!


Paul

[kosborn]

Like! :thumbsup:


Kevin

[petershah]

lovely image....I couldn't think of anything better to do on a rainy evening

[alpal]

Hi Peter,
great result,
can you please post a picture of what it looked like before this new processing technique?
It would be nice to see the before and after results.



cheers
Allan

[Paul Haese]

Hmmm, not sure what screens others are using but on my 4K screen there is speckle artefacts every where and in particular around the stars. In short it looks way over sharpened. I think your previous version was right personally.

[Peter Ward]

Thanks guys. I do agree with you Paul, it's a sharpening process that is pretty heavy handed (eg causes speckle) and does not like thin data. I suspect it could be used with a mask or two with good effect, but I'm still working on how to modify and best apply the technique (if at all...sharpness is intrinsic to the data and not something you can add later IMHO) :thumbsup:

[cometcatcher]

Can't see any problems on my Android Tab4 10. Looks fantastic.

[marc4darkskies]

Very interesting! I hadn't heard of APF-R before.

Not raining here but I don't have my obs rebuilt yet! :) Sooo ... I did a quick experiment on my final 253 and it looks like a handy method to put in the toolbox (see below before and after 100% crops). Certainly a very flexible and effective contrast enhancement tool with the ability to easily soften or harden the result to taste (my test is deliberately quite harsh for illustrative purposes). Looks like a very good final processing step to make an image pop a bit more. Naturally, as with most other processing steps, some masking will usually be required. Worth playing with for sure.

[strongmanmike]

Touche' :rofl:

Come'on Marcus get that Quialigo observatory up and running mate, we all need your contributions to our wonderful..:question:..obsession! :thumbsup:

Mike

[IanP]

Peter ...... top class .... :thumbsup:

[Joshua Bunn]

That's a ripper!:thumbsup:

[p1taylor]

Peter that is really something.

peter

[topheart]

Hi Peter,
Thanks for posting this..... Interesting !!!

Cheers,
Tim

[Peter Ward]

Ta guys...the point of the post (may have been lost on some) was to point toward the APF-R processing method.

As Marcus has also observed it is a little-known Photoshop contrast layering technique (clearly useless to those who don't use Photoshop) that if used judiciously can enhance finer details present in the data.

Worth a look IMHO. :thumbsup:

[gregbradley]

It certainly has a lot of detail. Didn't zoom in but from an overall perspective it looks like sharpening taken to the edge. Where that edge is would be the judgment point of the person processing.

There are numerous contrast enhancing apps in the last few years.

I'll watch the videos. I assume this is more of a sharpening approach. A bit like multi layer decon perhaps? We all know the weaknesses of decon so another approach could be very useful.

Computational photography is just starting to appear. I saw a video showing iPhone 10 S X photos up against a Sony A7iii. In a blind test I liked the iPhone images better! It uses computational photography where you have AI type processing power making choices in how the image is processed.

Interesting times.

Lets hope our iphones don't decide humans are inefficient and are the problem!

Greg.

[Peter Ward]

I hear what you are saying Greg, and sure, there are some interesting times ahead with post-processing of raw data.

That said, the physics of imaging has not gone away. A 3mm i-phone lens will never out-resolve a diffraction limited half metre or so aperture telescope.

My crystal ball would hopefully be seeing deformable AO's for amateur telescopes fitted with affordable em-CCD's within a few years....:lol:....well
one can hope.