[alpal]

Originally Posted by Sirius_Skies

Hey mate.
Your pixel peeping serves you well! I had a closer look at the stars and yes, there are blue/red rings (not sure how I missed it). Looking through the layers in PS shows they are an artefact that PS introduced when I tried to reduce some chroma noise I saw in the stars (happens sometimes). Removed that layer and no more rings!
As for those blue blobs at 10 o'clock, they are legit. However, I did just patch up a couple of them as StarXterminator partially removed a couple of them so went a bit "blobby".
The center of the galaxy was borderline blown out before stretching (about as bright as many of the stars!). I did have a play with masking it but tended to end up a bit flat. Could play with it a bit more but might just leave well enough alone for now.

Is is the background that seems dark to you or the whole image? I target a background brightness of ~25/255 (or about 10% greyscale), which tends to look about right to me, and looks bright enough on my monitor. Once I get to <15/255 the image takes on a more "inky black" that I prefer to avoid. I brightened the galaxy somewhat, which does bring the galaxy closer to mid-tones.
Cheers,
Jacob
P.S. I uploaded a new revision on Astrobin

OK - that's good Jacob,
PM sent.


cheers
Allan