Cheers guys
always good to get out and chuck together an image.
Regarding bringing out more background stuff, I think in this case I was looking for a nice natural looking result and stretching that area just made it look a bit too harsh this time, sure some more nebulosity came out in the back ground (and hey...I know how to reveal faint stuff, no fear of that
) but I had to use too much noise reduction to tame the stretched noise to match in with the processing look I was after and it just didn't look right....
I didn't want to have a highly detailed helmet crest and wings area and a non matching smoothed out faint extensions area. I see this in some selectively smoothed/sharpened galaxy shots for example and it looks wrong to me.
Buuut having said that...I did finish this at 2am or so this morning sooooo, maybe I'll take another look when I get home..?
Thanks for the feedback dudes
Oh and Geoff, good to see the imagination flourishing...you will be up to MBJ's standard before ya know it...
Mike