Tarantula Nebula, Take 2.

[Eden]

Same set of 5 minute exposures as in my previous post, reprocessed.

[Geoff45]

Good detail Eden. However, I prefer Take 1, especially if the colour saturation is boosted up a bit.
Geoff

[Eden]

Thanks a lot for the feedback, Geoff. I have spent hours playing around with this data, it's probably the most challenging I've worked with to date. It's hard to decide what looks "right" -- I am not a fan of playing around with the color but in the case of this target how does one know when it is correct with respect to what is actually in the sky?

[Geoff45]

Correct colour? Who knows? No human eye will ever see bright colour in galaxies and nebulosity, even from close up. We are right inside a large galaxy and there is virtually no colour to be seen. So in a sense, any colour other than very soft tinges of green or pink are unrealistic. That said, I would look for a decent range of colour in the stars orange through to blue but nothing too lurid. Also if the R, G and B histogram peaks line up, that's a pretty good indication of decent colour balance. For a really interesting discussion on colour in astroimages see http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=2542.0.
Geoff

[cometcatcher]

I like features of both. Some good data there.

Astro processing can be a real pain can't it? I wish it was as easy as taking pictures of aunty Jack and uncle Flo. ;)

After all these years I still get it wrong, but firstly I aim for a neutral background. After that it's up to you. One thing RickS said that will always stick in my mind "You need to learn to produce the colours you want rather than accept how it turns out" which says it all really.