[Paul Haese]

Thanks to everyone for the comments.

Originally Posted by Placidus

That's lovely, Paul. Well done. The natural star colours make the image sparkle. There's an Ara Shoreline style edge in the nebulosity running diagonally across the centre that's come out especially well, with sharp but subtle fine detail.

Thanks Mike. That shoreline stood out in a few reference images and I thought it needed to be that way on my image too. When you look deep into that area there are so many interesting objects to see.

Originally Posted by marc4darkskies

A beatiful rendition Paul! Great detail as well as subtle and nuanced colour!

Though the understated look here has appeal and I can see what you're getting at, the bring-out-the-faint-extents obsession in me remains unsatisfied - but that's personal taste I guess. The only real critique I have is that I find the dark halos around the stars in the neb a bit distracting.

Originally Posted by Martin Pugh

Great colour and detail here Paul. Very nice indeed, but I have to agree with Marcus regarding the black halos around the stars. Is this an artifact of blending in RGB stars? Nonetheless, really nice.

cheers
Martin

Thanks Marcus and Martin for your assessments. I had corrected the halos a little prior to both of your comments but once pointed out that it still existed I saw the halos again. Its caused from the star size reduction and the blend of the Ha and OIII together. I think I have reduced that problem now.

Originally Posted by lazjen

Very nice image. I almost wish I hadn't read the other comments about the halos and now I can't "unsee" it. However, from the point of view of learning, I'll watch for more information.

Your comment about adding "small quantities" of Ha and OIII - how did you do this part?

They should be unseen now.

I added Ha to luminance at around 15% and then added that to my RGB image in photoshop via a luminance layer. Then I used the Ha as a Lighten layer on its own at about 20%. Using Hue and Saturation and colourize in red and push the saturation to around 35%. Finally I added the OIII via a lighten mode layer at about 30% opacity. Colourized in blue at around 240 and saturation to 35%.

Generally smaller amounts is better than trying to add a lot for detail. Fortunately this nebula is well shown with the Luminance or clear filter so I was not relying too much on the narrow band data to give all the detail.