Hello Mike,
Looking to your image, which by the way is great, I can note some dark material spread out over the center of the paw.
I always had curiosity about it, although is very rare to see it in images posted in the net.
Then I decided to dedicate 2 nights to image this nebula and process it basically to avoid any compression of the dynamic range of the RGB and Ha data, as well as the LHaRGB data . I simply got a result totally different from that one normally is seen.
I don't want to bother you, but if you don't mind, would you please have a look on my outcome and let me know what do you think ? The link to the image is:
http://www.astrobin.com/full/106733/0/
Thank you Mike,
Fernando