Lagoon Nebula

[swannies1983]

First attempt at the Lagoon.

Details
Scope: 8" Newt
Mount: EQ6
Camera: unmodded Canon 400D
ISO1600
Exposures: 9x90secs unguided
Stacked in DSS
Photoshop for processing

Lagoon Nebula (http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/1843/lagoonnebuladoentlarge.jpg)

:)

[desler]

Wow Dan, the data is all there, just play around with your hue and saturation and colour balance to settle it down a bit. The blue is a bit overdone. Otherwise I think you'll end up with a very pleasing result.

Darren

[multiweb]

Very nice. Beautiful details. :thumbsup:

[swannies1983]

Thanks :). I thought the blue was a bit overdone but wasn't sure. I will have a play around with it.

Is there a particular order in terms of processing? These are the things I have learnt to do:

Adjust levels until happy
Adjust colour balance
Adjust hue and saturation
Adjust contrast (sigmoidal shape with levels)

Does it matter what order you do these in?

[p1taylor]

Dan there is really a lot of detail in there, as mentioned before blue needs sorting out.

peter

[desler]

Dan, I normally start my ps edit with curves, see the net in relation to stretching images, then adjust the black point in the levels window to bring the histogram over to the left, don't go past the edge as this is called clipping and you are effectively losing data you spent so much time collecting.

This action ( stretching) isn't a once off, you do it over and over again to get the desired results, each curves adjustment is basically smaller than the previous. Watch the histogram. Your trying to make the histogram a bell shape with all three colors equal.

Then, when your happy, look at you saturation levels, selective sharpening, noise reduction etc. Color balance is not something I play around with a lot because you can balance the individual colors in levels.

Good luck and look forward to seeing your repro's


Darren

[swannies1983]

Thanks again. I will work on my picture over the weekend. I gave it a better go last night and it was looking more like what others have posted (without as much detail due to the shorter exposures). I now understand how time consuming processing can be. I think I was just too excited and wanted to post the image ;)

[Ross G]

Great photo Dan.

Even more amazing as it's your first attempt.


Thanks.


Ross.