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Hi Grahame,
I had a bit of a play with it and it came up nicely so I think it is primarily in the processing.
Firstly your image is slightly black clipped. Have a look at the histogram for the image. You'll see the histogram is hard over to the left with no space. Always leave a bit of space on the left. One rule is to leave a bit of room there that you can trim up when you are near the end of your processing. In your case it means that some of the detail in that black dust cloud is lost as it has been cutoff. So watch your histogram when processing or at least make sure you leave a fair bit of space on the left side of your histogram. Almost any astroimage will have a little room on the left with a bell curve slimming out to a little wriggle along the bottom. That little wriggle is the faint detail in the black areas and you want to keep that.
This was a quick processing rundown I did. Firstly the first thing is the image looks a bit dull. You got some nice data there but it looks dull.
The Eagle Nebula is a bit like that. To get a vibrant Eagle Nebula is a bit tricky as it is surrounded by lots of Ha areas and a large blackish dust cloud. So:
1. Make a duplicate layer - set to soft light and opacity to about 15% or maybe 20% to increase contrast.
2. Use curves to brighten up the now more contrasty image.
3. Use shadows/highlights to bring up the contrast in the central area. I got it so the eagle itself showed up nicely. Play with those sliders a lot.
Generally the top one is set to only about 3, the 2nd about 2/3rds across the 3rd about 1/3rd to halfway.
Then highlights across to suit, then the slider below it about 2/3rds and then the 3rd almost acts like a focuser, usually sharpest detail is at about 1/4 the way across.
Increase colour correction about 20% and a touch of mid colour contrast as well.
Now your standard high pass filter contrast enhancement. Duplicate layer/soft light/high pass filter worked best at the higher numbers to include more of the structures.
Now layer/hide all/ brush tool set to 30% rub on the central parts only then flatten image when you have it like you want it.
Then the stars take too much attention in the image.
2 runs through of Noel Carboni's make stars smaller action did a nice job.
That's it. It now looks a lot different to the original and apart from the clipping which can't be repaired it looks pretty nice.
As far as the star haloes - I didn't mind that. There is a method to deal with this. Jase did a writeup a while ago. I haven't used it yet but it sounds like a good method. I thought the haloes looked fine as they make a statement that those stars are really bright but its not everyone's cup of tea.
Greg.
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