Orange/Red Horse

[Doogs38 (Alex)]

After weeks of grey skies, the heavens finally cleared on Sat night around 11PM but it remained very windy throughout the night, and the seeing was awful My mount gave a valiant effort to keep my refractor well pointed but I lost nearly 1.5hrs of subs (of 4hrs). The Antlia dual NB filter did very well subduing halos, but something produced the reflection seen on the RHS of the image.

Tried processing in APP and PS for two days but was unhappy with the result. Thought I'd give PI another go and this time after much trial and error, I got a reasonable result even if it's a bit too orange. PI does my head in, but I'll keep learning it. Thanks for looking.

SW120ED x 0.85 Reducer/Flattener
32 x 300s Dual NB ASI294MC
Darks, flats, dark flats. PI and PS.

[RB (Andrew)]

You have very nice detail.
Play with the colour balance and it'll be a stunner.

RB

[Doogs38 (Alex)]

Thanks Andrew, I was quite happy with the detail in this one - the dual NB filter can take the credit for that :-) I will be having a crack at using some masks (to which I'm very new) in an attempt to selectively add more red/magenta to the horse, and lighten the flame a bit too. I will also be adding OSC data to this over the summer period (... wishful thinking) to give some additional natural colour. Alex

[RB (Andrew)]

I'd love to see the final result.

[oska (John)]

Great shot Alex! you really tamed Alnitak and are getting the Xanadu effect (I don't know what it's called) in the wall behind the horse.

PI does everyone's head in, but to its credit it does a good job once you get the hang of it - not that I have yet. At least you can progressively see what you are doing rather than waiting to almost the end of the process and then "oh bugger". The best thing about it is that there's often many ways to do a thing, rather than "the one true way".

[Doogs38 (Alex)]

Thanks John, the Antlia dual NB filter did a great job taming the beasty Alnitak, although there’s still a very faint halo. For me, PI was simply the better program for processing this image - better stacking, better colour, better tools. APP made both the horse and flame quite red in colour which seemed unnatural … I’ve probably inadvertently selected a funky option somewhere that’s doing that lol. Alex

[Doogs38 (Alex)]

Righteeeee ... I've been learning new tricks with PI; it's a beast of a program but I'm starting to understand the basics :-) 2nd attempt at my horsie and flame; just sharing for fun. It needs way more data and especially good ol 'natural' colour, not this NB stuff. Alex

[oska (John)]

Good one Alex, keep 'em coming. Masks are a whole beast to learn just on their own, not that I have of course.
IMO if you've got enough data to progress your learning, in either acquisition or processing, then it's all good in my book and a bonus if it's both.

[Crater101 (Warren)]

I like the balance of colours here, and the composition of the image works really well. Nice work.

[Doogs38 (Alex)]

Thanks for your comments John and Warren. I spent most of my precious little down time last week playing with / swearing at / cursing PI and I think I'm finally coming to grips with its basics. Once I got beyond the naughty words and tanties, I actually started to like PI ... but it's still a beast and yep John, mask functions are *nothing* like PS and somewhat limited in comparison. I used only two simple masks for local histogram tweaking of the flame and horse's backdrop; most of the effort went into producing a HOO palette and then learning about the saturation tool which ultimately produced the second image below. Time to get back to playing with / swearing at / cursing PI