Gee I'm bored!!

[Itchy]

Hi everyone,

The cloud has gone but moon's back and I'm bored.:sad: :nerd: So I had to reprocess my Tarantula to stop going totally crazy:tasdevil:

I had adjusted the colour balance over the weekend and today I decided to try a highpass filter mask technique.

Here is the before and after. As a reminder:Meade LXD55SN10, Canon 300D (stock), MPCC, Baader UHC-S filter, 20x3min exposures at ISO200.

I would really like your opinions on the extra processing. And be honest!

Cheers

[avandonk]

Can I put this image into the the mosaic of the LMC.It would fix up the overexposed bit.If yes,can you send me a bigger pic.
I am bored as well,clouds and the moon is getting brighter.

Bert

[Itchy]

I've PM'd you Bert

[[1ponders]]

Damn fine reprocessing Itchy:thumbsup:

[RB]

I love it itchy.

I think the colour brings out more detail.
Can you elaborate on the high pass technique?

Is the filter your'e using a 2"?

[matt]

Itchy

If that's what you do with your time when you're bored...

you need to be bored more often!:lol:

I'd hate to have to make a choice.

But I do think the second image (reprocessed) has an extra 10 or 15 percent on the first.

And that's a big leap in my book

[Brad Moore]

Hi Tony,

I'm bored too!

Nice job in bring the hidden detail in the image. Do you take your images in RAW 12bit mode?

I also re-processed by NGC2070. Here is my version.

I re-collimated my refractor and took one 10min L shot between the clouds and added it the the data. It producted a much better result IMHO.

http://www.southern-astro.com/gallery.php?PhotoID=7

Cheers,
Brad

[ving]

bored? whachoo talking bout!

go out binary spotting! :)

great work andrew, processed and not... i am going to sit on the fence with this one :P

[Itchy]

Thanks for the comment.

Yes, the 2" filter attatches to the barrel of the coma corrector, which doubles as a t-adapter.

I picked up the high pass filter technique somewhere on the web, but I can't find the reference just now.:doh:

This technique allows you to enhance some features in the image while leaving the rest of the image unchanged.
This is what I did:

Start with a flattened image that has undergone normal processing with levels/curves etc. This type of processing often looses a little detail in some areas of a DSO (eg dust lanes in a galaxy or nebula).

Duplicate the layer (background copy).Make sure the top layer is selected. Apply the high pass filter using filter-->Other-->highpass. You may need to experiment with the radius a little to see what works best. I used around 50. If you want you can also apply some sharpening to this layer

Set the Blending for that layer as overlay. This creates a high contrast version of the image that looks too dark

Now create a mask for the layer using Layer-->Layermask-->Hide all. Your new layer now seems to disappear.

Select the layer mask in the layer pallette. Select the brush tool with White as the forground colour. Using as fairly small brush and zooming in, paint over the details that you want enhanced. This is actually painting white on the black mask, allowing the enhanced layer to show through.:painting:

Once you are done you can fade the effect by reducing the opacity of the layer.

That's it.


Cheers

[Itchy]

Thanks Brad. Yes, I use RAW exclusively. I then convert the RAW to CFA 16bit Lossless compressed FITS for calibration.



A definite improvement Brad. Did you use sharpening on your Luminance channel before applying it?

Cheers

[tornado33]

Yes thats a very pleasing colour balance too, and nice black sky, well done!
Scott

[atalas]

Got more detail out of as well Tony !