Its Gary's fault...i reprocessed my NGC253

[spearo]

Hello All,
I kept looking at GaryH's great shot of NGC253 with the modded Canon 20D and it inspired me to go back to my RAWs and reprocess my NGC253.

I reprocessed the 5 and 8 min ISO 800 shots (leaving out the 10 min ones) for a total exposure time of 46 min (so with 8 frames its no going to be as nice as Gary's but still).

I found that I was distorting the data too much by using the standard curve built into DeepSkyStacker. I flattened that curve a bit and i think i've improved my image a fair amount.
of course i did all sorts of other things to it, high pass, unsharp, crop, etc...

I also rotated it to make it just like Gary's! It seems to give it a greater 3D effect to my eye, I cant really explain why it seems nicer this way.

I'll need to capture more lights obviously but I'm glad Gary's image inspired me to go back and learn some more.

Thanks Gary:thumbsup:
frank

[Garyh]

Glad I inspired you to redo it Frank, but I say that is soo much better than the first post. The detail stands out much nicer. Yeah I don`t know why but 253 seems to look more 3D with the dark dust lanes below the core?
Keep doing your processing along the same line as this with more data and you are going to have some awesome images ex with a C14!
cheers Gary

[spearo]

Thanks Gary,
will do
hoping for clear skies this weekend (doesnt seem likely though...)
cheers
frank

[Matty P]

Nice reprocess Frank. It has really brought out the detail in the Galaxy much more. Nice colours as well.

Well done. :)

[Hagar]

Nice result Frank but time to move on. You must have nearly worn this data out. Time to dazzle with something new.

[spearo]

hahahaha
will do
cheers
frank

[Octane]

Frank,

Nicely done.

I prefer the original, to be honest. The reprocess seems to have pushed the colours towards grey, therefore washing out the details in the arms. Would it be possible to perhaps combine both but with masking and/or opacity to give the best of both worlds?

Either way, well done.

Regards,
Humayun