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Old 23-11-2012, 07:08 PM
astrospotter (Mark)
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: San Jose, CA, USA
Posts: 146
I'm afraid I don't speak photoshop, or PS, lingo and I don't know what you are using. I have been using PixInsight, or PI, and it fits my mindset but it has a tough learning curve. What I say below is not a good answer and sorry about that but it gives you some hints. A lot of well done tutorials that are about this PixInsight software that I highly recommend can be found on 'Harry's Astro Shed' so if nothing else from this conversation you may consider use of PixInsight but I do caution you it is kind of confusing so Harry really helps in that area with his tutorials.

You will not find this below on those great tutorials but many of the things I do have a basis in the raw tools Harry explains so well.

Some short thoughts on the tool that combines things goes like this:
I usually have 1 or two layers of very deep narrowband with Halpha for sure and then sometimes OIII. Through assorted tricks that this PI tool has that have odd names I do my best to create narrowband layers that do not have stars as white hot dots. One tool is called 'Morphalogical Transform' and that certainly has one of the most odd name of their tools but it can be used with a starmask to greatly subdue the stars in the Ha (narrowband) layer.

The Ha layer can be combined with your over-saturated nice star image that is processed in RGB by basically adding components of R,G,B together using a tool called PixelMath (some other astrophoto packages also have the PixelMath tool. Suppose you have a nice Halpha layer and you want to have it be the 'Ha Red'. Well more or less the white image you have of Ha can be 'mixed' with some other image where 'Ha' below is the image of white and we will use multiplication to 'add' it into an R, G, B layer that is from the stars. This technique can be done on several layers at once.

Red = R + (0.8 * Ha)
Green = G (We don't add in any Ha layer as green)
Blue = B + (0.2 * Ha)

So above we use a mixing formula where we use Red mostly and then 1/4 of the 'weight' of the red we also add in for Blue.

What I have 'glossed over' is how to prevent the mixing of the Ha with the RGB from leading to little rings around the stars. That is a complex issue and sorry I don't have any easy way of explaining that.

Harry has a tutorial on mixing in Ha to galaxies but that is a bit different than mixing in nebula. He adds tutorials all the time so I don't know what he has these days.

Good luck,
Mark
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