I'm still struggling to get my head around the colour settings for using a DSLR with DSS.
I got these two images of M83 from data on Friday night. The two images have identical raw files - 16 x 5 min subs at ISO 1600, with 16 darks, 20 flats and 20 bias. There is a bit of bloating and elongation - I'm still wrestling with piggyback-guiding at f/10 and 2540mm, but I'm sure I'll get there. Plus I've bought an off-axis guider which I'll try to work out soon, which should improve thisngs when I'm working with this long and slow a setup.
But the thing that's perpexing me is the colour settings in processing. DSS seems to give crisper alignments and doesn't clip the data the way MaximDL does. But for the life of me I can't get DSS to produce outputs with the colour range. You can see the difference below. I've stretched, sharpened and upped the saturation of both MaximDL and DSS outputs. Pushing up, say, the red balance in MaximDL brings out the clumps of nebulosity in the dark lanes of the galaxy. But pushing up the red in the DSS image just reddens the whole galaxy. I wonder what's going on?
[Edit: uploaded a version blending the DSS with the MaximDL as a colour layer, as Marc suggested. Good result I think!]
Sounds like DSS is pushing the Red channel/gamma and MaximDL has some sort of auto masking applied, to process areas identified as predominantly red (nebula). I dont use either BTW.
