[Alchemy (Clive)]

With the weather being wet the only thing to do Astro-wise is process images, ive been going over things i have done trying new techniques to try and improve.

this image was submitted recently as a full shot, i have cropped it to show at top... stacked calibrated image only
Middle.... my previous best attempt using curves levels etc
Bottom ..... 6 steps and complete.

i have put in a small jpeg pulled from APOD i think its fron the VLT telescope as thats on the name of file (should you wish to check its listed as a ngc 1365 shot there somewhere) ...so credits applied as needed for that one, i have only used it for comparison of colours and detail so i dont go too far from whats reasonable.

to start with given i am only using a 350d camera with a sub 1000 dollar OTA i reckon ive got stacks of detail...

in case you are interested i used the following process.

1. deconvolution in AIP4Win Van Chittert 27 levels at 2.22 point spread.

2. Shadow/ Highlight in Photoshop (Image-Adjustments-Shadow/Highlights) using only the shadow section turning highlights to zero

3. Brightness/ contrast in photoshop(Image- Adjustments-Brightness contrast)

4.Hue/ Saturation in photoshop( Image-Adjustments- Hue/ Saturation using saturation only.

5. Exposure in photoshop ( Image- Adjustments- exposure) but just lowering the gamma value.

6. Colour balancing and such in Lightroom.

you can repeat sections 2-5 in smaller increments and may get a better result im still experimenting.

While it may not be technically advanced i like the result i got and detail was better by a factor of 2 i reckon.

Still learning.......bye for now