It does not matter how long you have been imaging, you can always decide that an image is not quite up to what you think it should look like. I have reprocessed this image and it now has smaller stars, better subtle contrast control and a nicer colour scheme. I like this image better than the previous version.
Hi Paul,
Great image - best I've seen. I often wonder what the natural (actual) colours of this neb are as they appear different in different pics? I just took a pic of this neb last night and mine came out with different colours. Maybe personal preference.
Thanks,
John W
Thank you everyone for your comments. I appreciate you taking the time to left me know what you think.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John W
Hi Paul,
Great image - best I've seen. I often wonder what the natural (actual) colours of this neb are as they appear different in different pics? I just took a pic of this neb last night and mine came out with different colours. Maybe personal preference.
Thanks,
John W
John, this object has a large majority of hydrogen and the RGB colour of that is red/magenta. However, when imaging in narrow band it really depends on what palette you choose and how you push each colour. So don't think this is remotely how this object looks in broad band wave lengths. Also remember that a variety of problems exist in the interpretation of data. Certainly the major factors involved are calibration of monitors and each persons colour perception. This part of the hobby is really more art form than science to most astrophotographers; so you would expect to see variations in peoples idea of what looks good too.
This is a much nicer rendition. The light looks right and the picture has depth.
You know it is funny, for such a perennial target I found this quite hard to get it the way I imagined and even now I still am not sure I am really all that happy with it.
I have been focusing on luminosity in recent months and how that should appear in my images. Bright stars light up part of nebula from one side and that should be apparent in an image and that leads to a 3D look with further enhancement. The hard part is blending that with colouring. I don't really like green in my images but the green channel often produces a lot of luminosity in NB data. So finding a mix on some objects that gives me what I want can be difficult at times. This is one such time. Hence why I did the reprocess.
You know it is funny, for such a perennial target I found this quite hard to get it the way I imagined and even now I still am not sure I am really all that happy with it.
I have been focusing on luminosity in recent months and how that should appear in my images. Bright stars light up part of nebula from one side and that should be apparent in an image and that leads to a 3D look with further enhancement. The hard part is blending that with colouring. I don't really like green in my images but the green channel often produces a lot of luminosity in NB data. So finding a mix on some objects that gives me what I want can be difficult at times. This is one such time. Hence why I did the reprocess.
I agree 100% with that. Never had an issue with green though. Terrestrial shots that are HDR'ed to the max look as bad as astrophotos that are stretched to show absolutely everything on the same luminosity level. There's no more depth, no more light left. It's like looking at a rough fabric texture under a diffuse neon light. It's all flat. Nothing's left. No shadows. We still need to stretch our shots to show areas of interest but it's a compromise and harder to find the right balance, especially in wide fields.
