M16 Twice Cooked

[Garbz]

This is the first of my Astrofest processed photos. For the life of me I couldn't figure out how to process it.

I ended up saturating it, then desaturating it, then saturating again (hence twice cooked). In the process I tried to get rid of the incredible starfield using erosion. I don't know. Somehow shooting this target at astrofest with that much time dedicated to it resulted in a bit of a boring image with a nebula which didn't really stand out against the milky way.

Damn those stars.

What do you all think? Did I overcook it?

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

No way over cooked Chris!:thumbsup:

Nice colour in the nebula and the stars.

Cheers,

Justin.

[RickS]

Looks good, Chris. I think it's just one of those targets that's a bit boring in RGB. Some people succeed in making it pop but I think it takes a lot of processing skill and time...

[cometcatcher]

Looks fine to me. I like stars in nebula pics. ;)

[strongmanmike]

I agree with Rick Chris but having said that, the colour, stars and overall feel of the image are all great :thumbsup:

Mike

[multiweb]

Very nicely done. Do a star reduction on the field. That will accentuate the nebulosity. Same issue with M17. Because they're both in a very dense region of the milkyway the starfield is always overwhelming.

[Garbz]

Thanks guys, I've been staring at this all week.

I need to figure out how to better control star reduction. I've applied it twice already on this image before I posted it.

When I do it further the image becomes somewhat unrealistic and the star reduction starts to look unnatural. I'll keep having a play. Maybe if I only do a reduction on the smallest targets...