How do you process a mono solar image to get colour details?

[h0ughy (David)]

Ok I admit I am a tad thick, but how do you process the mono shots to get the multi coloured and textured images like that of Paul and Peter?

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by h0ughy

Ok I admit I am a tad thick, but how do you process the mono shots to get the multi coloured and textured images like that of Paul and Peter?

Colorize in PS. Play with the hue/saturation/lightness sliders.

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Colorize in PS. Play with the hue/saturation/lightness sliders.

Ok fair enough but how did they get the multi tonal effect - reds/oranges and golden yellows?

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by h0ughy

Ok fair enough but how did they get the multi tonal effect - reds/oranges and golden yellows?

Once you have colors in your pic it is easy to play with the color channel and replace some with others. That's how you turn green NB raw pictures into pleasing HST palette. In the same fashion as soon as you have a bit of dark/light yellows to habg on target those channels and turn them more into red or brown, etc...

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Once you have colors in your pic it is easy to play with the color channel and replace some with others. That's how you turn green NB raw pictures into pleasing HST palette. In the same fashion as soon as you have a bit of dark/light yellows to habg on target those channels and turn them more into red or brown, etc...

ahhh - this is where i am out of my depth

[JB80 (Jarrod)]

As a rough guide this is what I do, mind you Paul and Peter probably do things differently and better.

The first thing(using photoshop) is to go to the "Image" drop down menu select "Mode" and make sure you check "RGB Colour" not Greyscale.

Then try these rough settings in colour balance....
Highlights
Red +30
Green -20
Blue -40
Midtones
Red +20
Green +0
Blue -60
Shadows
Red +50
Green +10
Blue -100

From there you can always have a play with the values and also the "Selective Colour" tool in PS to highlight and change different tones.

This is only rough settings, you can play around with them to suit your taste.
I have no idea if this is how others do it but it's how I have done it in the past. Then again I have never produced a truly stunning and in depth solar image like those in question.

[h0ughy (David)]

thanks Jarrod

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

There's a tutorial on the "pseudo -HDR" methodology in the Solar Chat Library...
http://solarchat.solarastronomy.org/...hdr-processing

[sheeny (Al)]

I didn't post earlier, because I they way I colourise isn't the way most others do it, but just for the sake of completeness here's my method. (This is the simple way, but it may not give the results you are after Dave).

When I am processing in PS I usually have a levels layer to get the white and black points right, and curves layer to bring out the detail I want. After the curves layer I have another levels layer, but I only mess with the output sliders in this one: red channel I leave alone, green I pull the output slider down to 150 and the blue channel I pull the output down to 0. That gives the orange/yellow colour to my solar images.



Al.

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

You can also use the curves adjustment to individually stretch the RGB bands - it was described in S&T about a year back. Bend the red up in the middle, drop the green slightly in the middle and shut the blue off entirely. You can also boost the lower end of the red to make the prominences slightly redder than the rest of the sun. While I don't claim this will produce anything as good as Peter Ward's mosaics, I quite like the result. I wonder if having a few extra bits of data helps, as well as excellent optics? I notice Mr Ward uses a 12 bit camera.
Also, I don't generally take a second run of prominence exposures, but I suspect many of the good imagers do.
http://astrobin.com/11437/
cheers,
Andrew.

[asimov (John)]

I use Registax...Works for me.