[gregbradley]

Hi Steve,

Great image but to my eye there is still quite a bit of processing still to go on it.

Star sizes can be reduced putting attention more on the neb and less on the fairly large stars for the image scale (the stars seem quite large but that happens in some images - presume seeing was responsible?, tracking is awesome though).

Star colours are still too white and there is more colour that can be brought out.

The neb can stand more sharpening to reveal the small nebula ridges.

The dark dust areas can be made to contrast more from the background.

There are some dark dot artifacts in the background that need to be healing tooled out.

Background has green noise in it and mottled black flecks that can be smoothed out.

There is a light blue reflection nebula that surrounds the red nebula that can be brought out.

Saturation overall can be boosted a tad (subjective that one).

More detail can be brought out by adding a desaturated layer, sharpened and set as luminosity and layered in where its wanted.

Background and highlights can be colour adjusted to make the image look a bit more vibrant.

Only pointing out these items as your images are first class and this one can be a lot better than as-is and you image at such a high level.

I did all the above in about 10 minutes and compared it to the original and it seemed (at least to me, again subjective) to be a considerable gain (stars may've ended up a tad harsh so perhaps the star reduction needs to be subtle).

The final result can be a more striking and impactful image. Although let me modify my comments above in that this is my view of processing and others may want a different type of final result although some points usually get broad agreement.

For example I like Rob Gendlers' work whilst others may find it too colourful.

Greg.