M42 & Surrounding Area

[TheAstroGuy]

Hi there,

I just don't know what to do with this kind of data, too much going on.
Marc i really need to work out your tutorial for separating stars, i tried to follow it but failed miserably.

Back to the drawing board soon i think.

Regards Shane

image here : www.theastroguy.com.au/M42.jpg

[gregbradley]

That's really quite good. A tad too much magenta.

Noel Carboni Photoshop actions has a select out brighter stars that works really. Otherwise use colour range tool, click on a bright star, slide the fuzziness slider over until it is selecting quite a few stars then enter.
There is also a plus sign on one of the selector buttons on the colour range tool if you want to continue to select stars so you get a decent sample going.

The Carboni action though works great and is automatic.

You can then expand the selection to widen the circle so it includes the star and its outer rings.

Greg.

[multiweb]

Cool shot Shane. You've picked up stacks of neb in there and most importantly clear skies. :thumbsup: Tut is a guideline. Values may differ depending on your image scale and what you want to do. PM me if you've got troubles.

[dugnsuz]

Very nice image to work on Shane.
Loads of gas/dust and detail.
Extremely nice work on handling the core burnout.
Doug

[richardo]

Hi Shane,
this is a very good effort really.
As Greg mentioned, there is a significant magenta cast... I'm seeing this to the outer halo of the neb and around some of the blue regions.

For good tutorials on using PS, Louie Atalasidis, an IIS'er, has some good basic techniques to help you out.
Here's a link..
http://www.atalas.net/

Have a look at some of the top astro photographers sites, they often have little tutorials...
Go to Robert Gendlers site, he has a few that might get you started..
http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/

Other than that, for a few bucks, Noel Caboni's actions are great and you won't look back...

Once you learn a few techniques in PS, your imagination kicks in and you'll start finding lots of new ways/ techniques to bring out the max of your hard earnt data.

Rich

[TheAstroGuy]

Thanks guys,

All really helpful tips and tools, will go to work on this one and see how i go

Kind Regards

Shane

[Hagar]

Very nice Shane, Loads of info in there to play with.
If you just want to reduce the size of a few of the bigger stars you could try to pinch them a bit.
Change the image to an 8 bit image first (The distort/pinch only works on 8 bit images.
Select the star you want to reduce using the marque select tool with it set to elipse and slightly bigger than the star you wish to reduce.
Select filter/distort/pinch and try it at about 40 -50% and hit OK.
select deslect and if it's what you are happy with move on to the next one.
When finished you can always select image/mode/16bit and return it to a 16 bit image.
I usually leave this until the very last.

Good luck with it. Nice image look forward to seeing what it ends up like.