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Originally Posted by LewisM
How do you make an image pop/stand out and not look flat?
I keep my data linear for as long as possible, and yet it still looks way too flat to me.
Is it still a matter of more data = depth, or is there a trick to give it a feeling of depth?
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It's not a matter of more data or staying linear as long as possible. IMO, it's just a matter of getting everything completely schmicko: colour, contrast, etc. A lot of small improvements add up to an obviously better image. It also takes time, unless you're already some sort of visual artist, to develop a sense of aesthetics. Some would argue I still have a long way to go on this
As Alex mentioned, there are some tricks like blurring background objects and sharpening the foreground but I've never done this with an astro image. I have subtly lightened or saturated the colour of features that I wanted to pop out, but based on a mask extracted from the data (I draw the line at "painting" masks.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by LewisM
Also, is it better to save as a TIFF or PNG before putting it into PS? Which retains quality better?
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Both formats are lossless so either is good. Both support greater than 8 bits per colour channel too (16 bit in PNG and 16 or 32 bit in TIFF.) If you're going to do serious colour manipulation it is wise to go > 8 bits.