Sculptor Galaxy - Playing with levels and pondering the green corner?

[g__day]

Sculptor - a series of 8 * 20 minute shots is attached. I find this galaxy one of the more challenging to curve and level correctly - the sky generally gets too bright (light pollution) and when I try to curve and level things correctly I am prone to either loose data in the galaxy core or have it looking horrible.

I can live with this shot - but am rather puzzled - why is the top right hand corner looking greenish?

Camera used Canon 400D thru Hutech light pollution filter.

Matthew

[AlexN]

I like the second image better Matthew. good detail, great tracking etc.. colours look a little weird, but essentially its a nice image.

Gradient Xtermainator should be able to remove that green corner..

Are you using sharpening on this? if so, maybe try more gentle settings..

When you hit the curves, are you doing each channel individually, or are you stretching RGB together?

[g__day]

Hmm Gradient Xterminator sounds like a good idea!

No sharpening - actually I'm mainly doing Gaussian Blurs - that's why the stars are bloated!

Curves - I'm Stretching RGB together.

[AlexN]

Maybe try individually stretching RGB to their own merits... I usually find that with certain targets, some channels have much better data than other channels.. This way you can stretch the good channels to their potential without introducing artefacts and noise in the lower quality channels..

When gaussian bluring, use the magic wand tool (turn off "contiginous") and select a star. This should select all the stars within the pre-detirmined colour range.. Then in the top menu, click select, modify, expand and expand the selection by 2px. then click select, inverse to invert the selection. that way, everything is selected except the stars. After that, click select, modify, feather. and feather the selection by 1 or 2px. Then apply your blur.. This way you will blur down everything except the stars... That should reduce the bloat in the stars, whilst still affecting the rest of the image how you see fit.

Hope this helps mate.
Alex.

[[1ponders]]

That green area reminds me very much of over corrected dark subtraction for amp glow in the old 300D.