Quote:
Originally Posted by troypiggo
The after looks fantastic. Great result. You use that astro anarchy guy's technique? His PS actions?
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I used a bit of the steps that were recorded in the actions combined with some other techniques in the tutorials for the tone mapping. Namely removing the stars with multiple iterations of the dust and scratches filter in PS with decreasing parameters each pass, then overlaying the original as a darken blend to put back the dark bits you might have left behind without putting the stars back in. Then what I really like is the difference blending between the starless version and the original to get the stars only. That's genius. With the appropriate Threshold and colour range selection and proper feathering on the selection you can truly isolate every single spec in the picture and move it to a separate star layer. Once you got that right you're 99% there. The rest is just standard stuff. When you're done you blend the stars back in with a lighten mode or other to suit your taste. I tried screen, pin light. Depends on the picture. I now also use the difference layer trick to isolate clipping in stars or nebulosity so I can then tweak the highlights back down. I did that on the tip of the cone and also on the planetary top right. Very very cool.