Been a steep learing curve with processing and having some problems with DSS not giving the expected results so played round with a single 4 min 800 ISO ARW (Sony A77) frame and one dark. Taken through CLS filter and the Lunt102ED.
DSS stacked with one dark to remove some noise background
Image Data Converter allowed me to balance the histogram in ARW to bring up the red component to compensate for the CLS filter then converted to TIF.
More tweaking in Pixbuilder Studio with levels and curves then cropped (original stretches for all of the 'sword' length)
I must have bumped the mount fractionally during the exposure because the stars all had faint tadpole tails.
Opened in Paint Shop Pro where I edited out the tails and a few more hot pixels. Then resized to meet posting rules and Unsharp mask to give it an edge.
I know the stars and core are blown out, what do you expect for a 4 minute exposure but happy to have been able to bring out the nebulosity colour and some depth. Obviously not the classic way to process a frame or two but just shows you it pays to experiment.
I can recommend both Image Data Converter and PixBuilder Studio to anyone wanting to play with images. They are both free and have the advantage of having Preview so you can see the result as you tweak and see the result of a curve or level adjustment in the graphs and numbers. The original for this is quite blue due to the CLS filter but using the RGB controls in both IDC and PixBuilder I could bring up the red channel to fix the imbalance.
Still got a long way to go to even get close to the experts on here but at least I'm improving ... I think
