Western Veil - New Revision

[Rex]

G'day everyone,
Western Veil from last month. Seeing was not good that night. Took me forever to process this, I have never processed an image with so many stars. I am still not sure my processing is ok. Let me know what you think.
Image details:
42X300sec @ ISO1600 with the gear in my signature.
Thanks for looking.

OK everyone, I felt the original was too smooth so I did a reprocess, colours came out a little different, probably better than the first, not sure. I have attached it as the second image in this post. I am much happier with the detail I pulled out of this one. Let me know what you think, and pointers and advice well regarded.
Thanks for looking

Larger version of the redo is here: http://www.astrobin.com/full/136069/0/

[rmuhlack]

Top image there Rex. Got to be happy with that!

[Stevec35]

Very nice Rex!

Steve

[Camelopardalis]

Beautiful Rex, well done :thumbsup:

How did you tame all the stars? :confused2:

[Rex]

Thanks Richard. I found this to be the hardest image I have ever processed.



Thanks Steve, glad you like it.



Thanks Dunk. I really struggled to be honest. I used several different range masks at different stages and hit the stars with Morphological Transform to reduce them. It was quite hard to ensure the nebula was adequately masked so it wasn't affected by the process. I ended up having to use pixelmath to combine a star mask, and a range mask, so that the nebula was protected but the stars weren't. I just kept trying different ways of doing it until I found one that worked. Gave me a huge headache, but I learnt a lot. Sorry to ramble but I wanted to explain without being vague. Thanks again for the kind words.

[RickS]

Good job, Rex! One trick worth trying is to clone your Luminance, hit it with multiple iterations of HDRMT and then use it to generate the star mask.

[cometcatcher]

Lots of faint Ha nebula in there Rex. The modded 1100D is really performing.

[multiweb]

Nice shot Rex. :thumbsup:

[Camelopardalis]

Awesome, thanks Rex! It's a high bar you've set there :)

[Rex]

Thanks Rick, and thanks for the pointers, I will definitely be trying that out. I'm always looking for easier ways to do things.



Thanks Kevin. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the astro mod was the best thing I could have done for my images. I did it myself so cost nothing apart from time and as you say the extra Ha it picks up is well worth it.



Thanks a lot Marc, appreciate it.



Thank you again Dunk for the kind words. I am actually not 100% happy with it, it looks a little too smooth to my eye. I might have another play down the track (after I get over the headache of the first round :lol:), and see if I can make it look a bit more natural.

[Rex]

New revision attached to the first post, hopefully this one is better. :)

[Placidus]

Most good, Rex!

[Rod771]

Looking good Rex!



Rick's spot on, I normally follow Jaun's steps Linked here (http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=09064b61e26d5b4 4c48f87d4bab9b10a&topic=6001.msg40719#msg40719) when creating a star mask.

[Rex]

Thanks Mike.



Thanks Rod, and thank for the link. I will definitely be trying that out as I said to Rick.

[Ross G]

Great capture Rex.

Looks really good.

Ross.

[strongmanmike]

That's veily good Rex :P...interesting hearing all the convoluted processing steps too :eyepop:...things we do huh? usually for hours on end too :lol:

Mike

[Rex]

Thanks Ross, I'm happier with the second attempt. This is definately the hardest image I have ever tried to process. I'll get there, just takes time and practice.



Thanks Mike for the "veily" nice comment ;), still got some learning to do before I am totally happy with this one, but with my current skills, this is it.

[Andy01]

The reworked version looks really good Rex. Less stars and richer colours - top work!

It's a target that I'd live to shoot but sadly suspect is too low for me here in Melbourne.

Keep up the good work :)

Cheers
Andy

[Rex]

Thanks very much Andy. It's a slippery slope this processing, two steps forward and one step back, that's how I roll. :P

[tilbrook@rbe.ne]

Wow!:eyepop:

That's a cracker Rex!:thumbsup::thumbsup:

Love the colour in the repro, lot's of detail too for such a northerly object.

Cheers,

Justin.