Latest Ngc3372

[bluescope]

Hi All

I managed to get some decent shots of Eta last Friday night as we had clear skies here.

I remember reading an article on processing the stars in images to make them less " in your face " in the image, if you know what I mean. Is there any easy way to blend them instead of having stark white blobs ? If anyone can do it with this image and re post it in this thread with tips on processing it would be appreciated.

:thumbsup:

SW 254mm F4.7 Newt, ST2000XCM,EQ6 Pro, Baader UV/IR and UHC-S filters.
5 x 5min subs, stacked DSS

[strongmanmike]

Nice work Steve, I like your framing :thumbsup:.

The white star issue seems to plague many DSLR images and I think it is to do with it being easy to over saturating them? You use a one shot color camera yes? These are basically coooled DSLR's as they have the colour matrix over the pixels too. I use a mono CCD so to be honest I am not exactly sure what you should do but more shorter exposures added together might work? What do others think? I am sure there is a good explanation?

Mike

[bluescope]

Thanks Mike, lets see what others come up with ! I think the shorter exposures may help but as I said I did read an article, which I may have archived somewhere, that explained a processing technique to help tame the little beasts. Hopefully someone else has read it or indeed uses the technique.

:thumbsup:

[Garyh]

Nice Hanson!
I think a lot of us get those blown out stars.
I find selecting the brighter stars then a light minimum filter helps to soften them as well as shrink them a little.

Done a similar shot myself the other night before moonrise which I am just about to post..
cheers

[renormalised]

I don't mind if the stars look a bit blown out....makes the piccie look dramatic. I guess, though, it's upto the individual's taste.

[Ric]

A great looking image Steve, nice colour and detail in the Keyhole.

Cheers

[bluescope]

Thanks Gary. What's a light minimum filter ? In what program ? :shrug:



I just think the bloated stars take the eye away from the main subject detail.;)



Cheers Ric !
:thumbsup:

[Alchemy]

this works best on a refractor, star spikes will tend to square up the stars a bit , be carefull not to go too hard too early as you will end up with halos around the stars.

the process gary is talking about probably uses Photoshop using
SELECT-COLOR RANGE tool, followed with FILTER -OTHER -MINIMUM. It would pay also to use a feather if you want to try this process, SELECT -FEATHER. it takes a bit of fiddling to make it look natural. Heres a thought for you to consider, what appears as wrong, or noisy or not natural may not show up when you resize it to the 200kb limit:whistle:

[Matty P]

Nice Keyhole Steve, great colour and detail.

Well done.

[bluescope]

Thanks Alchemy that sounds like what I read although I seem to remember the article going into rheems of detailed instructions that prompted me to put it in the too hard basket at the time. Thanks again for the tip I will give it a go, and ofcourse thanks again to you Gary.

:thumbsup:



Thanks Matt, glad you like it !

:thumbsup: