WOW! Processing helps.

[JB80 (Jarrod)]

You guys probably already know this but I'm amazed a the difference a bit of photoshop can make.
After a lot of looking at toutorials and getting pointed in the right direction I have managed to improve my first Mars pic to a degree I didn't think was possible.

If you saw my thread you'd have seen a tiny browny red smudge which I was happy with as a first effort as it showed more than what I could see visually.
The next day I thought a reprocess would be in order, I didn't do much just resized it and played with a few settings and came up with again what I thought was a better image, so I was even happier.

With that second picture someone took it and showed me what they could get out of it and I was gobsmacked. Basically I still don't know exactly what they did but it entailed a resize, brightning, changing the colour balances and sharpening so I set about trying to recreate what they did. My pic is still not as good as theirs but I'm amazed by what was possible from that tiny little avi.

Maybe I'm wrong and it looks rubbish, I know it's not great compared to others but for me I'm over the moon and inspred to push on because if all I was getting was a little brown smudge I could of easily got disheartened.

Jeez, sorry for the long post I'm just happy is all

Here are the three stages from my first effort to where I'm at now all created from the first image, any comments and tips as always are appreciated.

[omegacrux (David)]

Massive difference , nice

[Polmear (Tim)]

Good work. There's plenty of detail there.

I had a bit of a look at Mars last night. It's a bit difficult, visually, capturing any details, but I did notice a system of what I like to call 'canali'

Maybe I'll draw a map.

[JB80 (Jarrod)]

Cheers guys

Next time I'm going to try the x3 barlow and see how it turns out. I'm yet to really see Mars with good viewing so I hope I'll luck out.

[Helo (Peter)]

I read your post last night which inspired me to look up you-tubes on Registax and had another go at stacking an old Saturn Avi (no new ones as raining all the time here). There was a lot I was not doing in Registax and it really made a difference (see images below), one stacked but badly and lousy processing and the other stacked better, wavelets applied much better and some minor photoshop adjustment. It was still a poor Avi in the 1st place and lousy viewing but I can't wait to get out and grab some better data and learn this processing better. Thanks for your post!

[JB80 (Jarrod)]

I'm glad that my post has inspired you and hopefully to push on further in much the same way that I was.
It's easy for a beginner(like me) to have a go and be a bit underwhelmed at first but now like you said I'm jumping at the bit to do more and hopefully improve.

That reprocessed Saturn looks excellent, it's certainly worth trying to nail this processing business.
I plan on going over a couple of old avi's too when time permits and going on your Saturn I think I'll start there as mine first go was promising but can clearly be improved.

I think I'll checkout a couple of youtube vids too.

[Poita (Peter)]

I always ask the great planetary imagers to post a single frame from their .avi files, so I can get a handle on whether my weakness was in my capture, or in my processing.
It helps to see the raw files from a great image, so you know whether it is worth re-processing your stuff, and most guys will post an image if asked.

It is incredible what can be pulled from what looks like a blurry, noisy mess!

[JB80 (Jarrod)]

That's actually a good tip and like you say most guys would have no problem with that.

I posted a couple of my Saturn captures on youtube a while ago for a similar reason, basically to see if they where any good or not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvQks-T5FVg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaycDzyLldA

They were a bit rough as I had no motors at the time so it was a matter of manually twisting the knobs and then running it through castrator.
Soon I'll be able to get some new Saturn avis so it'll be interesting how they compare.