Full Moon Mosaic - Sep 17, 2005 - I'm Learnin'

[RapidEye]

OK, I'm still learning, but I made another pass at the moon with my Digital Rebel and 10" F/5 GS Dob

Particular settings:

• Celestron Shorty Barlow required to reach in-focus
• Digital Rebel (D300) at prime (F/10+)
• ISO 800
• 1/400 second
• RAW format
• Composite of 9 images, processed with AutoStitch
• Post processing done with GIMP and the RAW reader and HighPass filter plugins
• Used a Hartman mask for focusing - Man that made that easier and more accurate!!! Much better focus on this one than on last month's.

I used the processing tips IceMan gave me on my last shot, and I was pretty happy with how it came out. I'm still not in the same league as Ice is, but I'm learning

I'll probably upload the full 5000x5000 to Shutterfly and get them to process a 8x10 for me that I can frame and hang up.

Dang - this is FUN stuff!!!

Thanks IceMan!!!

[Lee]

Really an awesome result.... I would touch it with a bit of contrast or unsharp mask in photoshop - make it pop... The 5000*5000 image (big!) is prob fine though.... I'll need to play with HArtmanns to help mine I think....
COngrats again....

[iceman (Mike)]

Very nice RE, great shot!

[RapidEye]

Originally Posted by plasmodium

I would touch it with a bit of contrast or unsharp mask in photoshop - make it pop

I tried to duplicate what Ice showed me on the last one:
Ran a HighPass filter on a duplicated layer, pulled the transperance down to %30 or so, then flattened. Hit it with an unsharpen filter, converted to greyscale, then bumped the contrast up and brightness down a bit.

I'm sure the settings on the filters could be improved - it took a bit of trial and error to get it where I liked it.

Originally Posted by plasmodium

I'll need to play with HArtmanns to help mine I think....
COngrats again....

Man, its the best 30 cents I've spent in a long time . I did up a printout using Visio, ran it off on the laserjet at work, cut stuff to size, laid it over a posterboard, traced it, then cut again - took all of 10 minutes.

It easily saved me 10 minutes of trying to tweak the focus

I didn't even have a bright star nearby to use, but just using it on the moon helps a ton. You can really see when you've got focus nailed just by watching the edge of the disk.

I can't recomend it enough!

Thanks for the feedback and help fellas!!!

[iceman (Mike)]

Ran a HighPass filter on a duplicated layer, pulled the transperance down to %30 or so, then flattened. Hit it with an unsharpen filter, converted to greyscale, then bumped the contrast up and brightness down a bit

Did you change the highpass filter to "hard light" before changing the opacity to 30%?

Also don't change the brightness, just bump up the contrast.

Anyway, all processing is a personal preference.. some prefer a smoother look while others like to bring out more detail. You've done a good job on your 2nd attempt

[iceman (Mike)]

Here's my processed version again - probably a little overdone because I was working off your already processed version, but it shows what I was talking about anyway.

Oh I also reduced it to 800px to keep the file size down.

[RapidEye]

Originally Posted by iceman

Did you change the highpass filter to "hard light" before changing the opacity to 30%?

Hmm - it works differently in GIMP.
I can change the layers light setting to "Hard Light", but the only settings I have on the HighPass filter are "Radius" and "Brightness".

For that one, I used a radius of 100 and brightness of 128.

The Unsharp Mask settings I used were Radius 5.0, Amount 0.5 and Threshold of 0. I fiddled with that some, but only made things worse.

I need to take the time to read up on what each of the settings do in ALL of the filters I have available.

Originally Posted by iceman

Also don't change the brightness, just bump up the contrast.

I tried that, but it was too washed out - must be from not getting the highpass filter and or desharpen filters right.

That one you touched up really hits it again. Like you said, its all a matter of personal preference and that one looks just a tad overprocesseed, but it is still great how you managed to pull that detail out of the both the brighter and dimmer areas.

Any suggestions on tweaks I can do on the High Pass or DeSharpen?

Originally Posted by iceman

You've done a good job on your 2nd attempt

Thanks - I'd like to get it a little bit better like yours. Any guidance you can give me on the settings I used would be appriciated. Here, I'll upload the original (the orientation isn't right - needs -40degree rotation) so that you can see how much better my so-so processing made the shot

It may not look as good as yours, but I did make some improvement