[avandonk]

Thanks Monte it was my first try at colour blending. Two programs that are a must are ImagesPlus and RegiStar. I find nothing beats RegiStar for aligning and stacking images.
I have also started using EasyHDR to enhance dynamic range so it is not limited by the camera.
If you zoom right in to the image you will see how clear all the faint stars are. The original 12MB JPG is even better!
With this image I also used Richardson Lucy enhancement using IP on each individual colour fit image before blending this seems to work much better than doing it to the colour image. There is more real control over levels that are enhanced and thus leads to no or less artefacts.
You will also notice that all the stars have colour this is due to EasyHDR as the bright star info comes from the short exposures before they are saturated.
I agree that processing is a black art and I still need to learn more but that is part of the fun of this very difficult hobby called Astrophotography.

Bert

I have added a 100% crop from the 12MB image and upsized it by a factor of two. At this scale on a typical monitor the total image is about 2.4 meters wide!