M42 redone with a lot of help from Louie!

[cybereye (Mario)]

Hi everyone!!

As I've been out of action for a while due to rain, floods, storms and having some pieces fashioned for my camera, I thought I'd sit down and reprocess my M42 that I took back in December. I worked my way through the reprocessing with Louie's tutorials playing in the background. I'd listen and watch, pause, adjust my image of M42 accordingly and then continue the tutorials.

After a lot of work and then stacking 3 different images in Photoshop (hence the slightly elongated stars at the edges that needed a small amount of rotation to match exactly) I ended up with an image that I am very happy with. I must admit that I did the noise reduction using Neat Image and not Louie's Noise Reduction technique. Sorry Louie!!

Anyway I've attached the original version of my processing that I did the night I took the images and the reprocessed one. Can you spot the difference??!!

Just to be complete this image is a stack of:

11x30s subs
6x2min subs
3x5min subs
All @ ISO 800

Each group was stacked in DSS using a corresponding dark and a the same flat was used for all 3 groups. The 3 resulting images were individually processed in Photoshop and then stacked.

The image itself was a test of my newly acquired Baader MPCC and UHC-S filter and was taken with a full Moon close by.

I would love to get some feedback as to where I could improve on the new image as really that's the only way I'll learn!!

Cheers,
Mario

PS In case you were having trouble, the reprocessed image is the second one!!!

[FlashDrive (Poppy)]

Very Nice Mario .....Quite a difference in the second Image.
Keep going ..... it only get's better.....

[h0ughy (David)]

big difference your going well and learn all you can from Louie!

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

No trouble seeing the difference well done

[Keshdogga (Casey)]

Massive improvement there Mario. Great job How did you go about bringing out the darker nebulocity in the center of M42?

[cybereye (Mario)]

Casey,

The central portion of M42, the area that is normally over-exposed in long time shots, was rectified by blending in the stack of the 11x30s images with the 2min and 5min stacks using the technique described by Louie in his tutorial "Masks for Photoshop".

In the 2min and 5 min shots the central portion of M42 is well and truly overdone and there is very little detail visible. However that detail is quite obvious in the 30s images so I blended the detail in. I'm still not 100% happy with the colour of that central portion as it looks a tad green to me. However I'm ecstatic as to what I've been able to achieve in this rework of my data!

Cheers,
Mario

[adman (Adam)]

great stuff mario - looks like we are at similar points on the learning curve!

Adam

[mangrovedutch (Dutch)]

G'day Mario, Great capture, they look great. There is no way that I could get it like that at this stage. I do notice a number of bright red pixels in your images (as I have seen in the ones I have taken). Is this where the dark exposures come into play? I'm not meaning to hijack your thread, just thought it was an opportunity to continue the learning curve.

Regards, Dutch

[cybereye (Mario)]

Dutch,

I saw them as well but I've used dark files. However they do match up with stars in my previously taken images of M42 so I can only assume they're stars...

Mario