Wow, what beautiful work Greg. I love the colours you've brought out in the galaxy and the stars - creamy milky colour and still some contrast from the blues in the arms and red/browns in the centre. Not the least bit overdone. A wonderful return for the many hours invested. Congrats!
Wow, what beautiful work Greg. I love the colours you've brought out in the galaxy and the stars - creamy milky colour and still some contrast from the blues in the arms and red/browns in the centre. Not the least bit overdone. A wonderful return for the many hours invested. Congrats!
Thanks Rob.
I processed this one differently to my usual routine.
I used Ken Crawfords multiple level deconvolution technique from his recent tutorial posted here. Thanks Ken!
I also picked a star and used it as a reference for deconvolution on the rgb so they all ended up with the same size measurement (FWHM).
I usually do LLRGB. Where I combine LRGB together, work on luminance separately to enhance it and layer it in later for added vibrance. This one is RGB with luminance added once only. The luminance is 30 iterations of positive constraint deconvolution, plus 200 iterations of both positive constraint and maximum entropy layered in with masks and kept all the same levels in CCDstack. I also used Focus Magic, Topaz Labs adjust 5, a couple of gradient correcting techniques including Gradient Xterminator and an apply image technique. I used soft light layers and high pass filtering to help bring out some more detail.
To get detail out seems to be a 2 pronged approach - sharpness routines plus colour contrast approaches. This has both.
Its amazing how much you can sharpen up an image doing this.
Quite nice looking work Greg. Maybe the blue could be boosted a little. Also there is some ringing around the brighter stars. The bright star just to the right of the lower galactic arm has a noticable ring aorund it. Looking around the field the effect is noticable. If you can sort this out I reckon the image will be a cracker.
Quite nice looking work Greg. Maybe the blue could be boosted a little. Also there is some ringing around the brighter stars. The bright star just to the right of the lower galactic arm has a noticable ring aorund it. Looking around the field the effect is noticable. If you can sort this out I reckon the image will be a cracker.
I checked the blue it seems fine. I can pull the magenta back a tad - perhaps that is what you are noticing/
Yes some of the stars seemed to get a ring. I did work on that already. But I think in the decon process I let a bit of harshness leak through. I'll have to go back in the process and handle that. Its in the luminance not the colour layer. A repro to address that would be worth it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
Like Paul said, if you can fix the ringing around some of those stars, this image will be ace....not that it already isn't
The details in the galaxy are superb
Great work, Greg
Thanks Carl.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TrevorW
Greg
Very nice indeed but need to work on smoothing the background IMO
attached is one I did a quick fix on compared to your original
Thanks for the suggestions Trevor. Darkness of background may be a personal taste. Generally I go for the dark grey background which is the actual colour of the night sky. A black background does bring up contrast but it can black clip some faint stuff. I did smooth the background and it was slightly uneven at one point but I thought I smoothed that aspect of it out. Are you referring to the darkness of the background? I notice in your processing the core colour changed and so did the galaxy arms and that is one aspect of my image that I liked. So I'd want to keep that unaffected.
Quote:
Originally Posted by peter_4059
Beaut image Greg. The detail in the centre of the galaxy is amazing.
Thanks Peter. I like this multiple levels technique. I just need to be more careful with the stars as I do it. My mask wasn't done carefully enough on the stars. I'll go back and address that. Unfortunately its early in the processing!
Well to me it looks pretty good Greg the stars look ok to me too, you have some hard critics perhaps the blue is a little too cyan-white in the arms and I like a less magenta more yellow core area but it's certainly not a big issue and the background looks fine to me ... overall looks good with plenty of detail.
I did however notice there are two bright stars missing from your shot near the galaxy, I am assuming something in your layering has blotted them out...see if you can spot'em
Well to me it looks pretty good Greg the stars look ok to me too, you have some hard critics
Mike
No mate, on my screen these stars stand out, more than just a slight change. These have a bright ring around the outside. Might be monitor settings but these can be seen. I like a bright monitor, I don't think I am being hard here.
As for the blue I thought a bit more blue could be added to the image but that is personal taste only.
One of my favourite galaxies. I like your colors just fine.
I too on my monitor get fairly severe bright rings on some stars.
I cant critique realy as my images are nowhere near this quality yet and I would be happy with an image half as good. But if you clean up those rings it will be even better.
Louis had some nice steps in his tutorials on his site that dealt with removing these kind of halos
No mate, on my screen these stars stand out, more than just a slight change. These have a bright ring around the outside. Might be monitor settings but these can be seen. I like a bright monitor, I don't think I am being hard here.
As for the blue I thought a bit more blue could be added to the image but that is personal taste only.
...bah, hard arse
Although on another look Greg, it appears your HII regions in the arms are looking kinda yellow now, did you repro..?
Wow - 11 hours of my favourite galaxy. Very nicely captured and it looks great on my monitor.
I must say that I wonder how many ap devotees actually use a calibrated monitor. I was all over the place until spending some considerable $ to get this correct but then again colour is really a personal taste unless the photo is strictly calibrated (recommend a program such as eXcalibrator and Spyder3).
My 2c but love the subtleness shown in your image.
What the? The colour is wrong?
Unless you are looking at a RAW or similar file and not a compressed image AND then you have a properly calibrated monitor then you must be joking.
I say bloody well done Greg and leave it as is mate.
the stars look ok to me too, you have some hard critics 
perhaps the blue is a little too cyan-white in the arms and I like a less magenta more yellow core area but it's certainly not a big issue and the background looks fine to me 
