Robby, Tony only said he'd appreciate some help. I'm not going to help him until he's ready to sell his 20Da To be honest I don't really know what I did. Just mucking around with the levels and curves, both rgb and red, in small increments and switching back and forwards between to two adjument options.
I've been wondering about that (AN and SM) since I've had the AN. Unfortunately I'm still waiting to for enough decent nights when its either not cloudy or not full moon to use the thing. I'm slowly getting there as long as I use the Exact Gem setting, but having probs with the rough align setting with the Set Alt Ref??? Where do I point the damn scope when setting it?
Sorry for hijacking Tony.
Back on Topic.
Tony after I opened the original in PS I cropped to remove any obvious stacking artifacts. Then using levels adjustment, raised the leftmost slider to under the left edge of the histogram and lower the far right pointer back to about a quarter the way to the histogram edge on the right. I try to keep the middle slider sort of midway between the other two. Maybe a bit more towards the right one if anything. I then go into curves and slightly adjust the upper portion of the curves line to bring out more detail of the nebula then do the same in the Red curves section. Then back to the levels. I don't use any set routine or pattern, just what looks good to me atm. Not very scientific I know, but I'm only 6 months ahead of you remember. I feel that part of the secret is numerous little adjustments, rather than big steps.
Hi Paul,
We'll catch up next week re AN. I point fix alt ref towards DEC = 0° and have fix alt ref set to 0 (not 90). Sometime I do it the do 2 align stars, then go back to fix alt ref and move in DEC until it equals 0. Then mark the fix alt ref on the DEC axis for the mount.. Sorry for off-topic!!
Cheers
I have started with the original each time and then only applied:
auto contrast
auto levels
auto colour
Each time going back to the original and only apply the one change. No changes have been applied on top of each other, simply done to gice the reader a feel for what each adjustment does to an original on its own.
Thanks again Striker for the original, i have really learnt something today!!
1. Adjust levels. Slide left arrow inwards to darken background slightly. Slide right arrow inwards to lighten image slightly
2. Adjust Curves. From curves dialogue take bottom left part of curve and drag upward very slightly keeping top right of curve straight
3. epeat step 1
4. repeat step 2
5. Continue doing step 1 and 2 in very small amounts till you are happy with brightness
6. When you are happy with last curves adjustment, then go backwards using history and instead of changing the RGB curve, change just the red channel by selecting RED in the curves dialogue instead of RGB. Make same upward adjustment of lower left part of curve with red channel.
7. Now adjust image saturation using Hue/Saturation Dialogue. Slide Saturation to right by about 20%
8. Adjust hue if you want different red colour balance.
9. Use Colour Balance Dialogue to dial up the red if its not to your liking
Once I am happy with image I then duplicate the entire layer and choose filter->other->high pass. Set pixel size of filter to about 7 and press ok. You will see a strange grey image
10. Set layer mode of this grey image to overlay and watch the details of the core suddenly pop out. You can see it by pressing the eye icon on this layer on and off which blinks the effect in and out
11. I then use a layer mask to hide the whole high pass effect and then use a white paint brush on the layer mask to paint the effect back into the core and selected areas.
12. I then select noisy areas of bottom layer (original image) with a lasso and Feather set to about 20px (original image) and run the noisy areas through noise reduction. I use a program called Neat Image that has a Photoshop plug in, but you can download free noise reduction programs like community edition of Noiseware, Noise Ninja etc….
I then flatten the image, save it and its all done. (these steps in total take about 10 mins once you are used to them)
Best Regards
Chris Venter
Last edited by cventer; 20-08-2005 at 06:10 PM.
Reason: Fix formating
Excellent effort guys, great reprocessing by everyone. Continually amazes me how giving people are around here - no keeping things close to their chest, trying to be the best. People are willing to share their techniques in order to help make everyone a better astrophotographer.
I like your rendition best mike EDITED (I meant paul;sorry Robby, I know you South Sea Islanders are easily confused); who's to say what's correct, but yours is the most pleasing to the eye. Of course you had a masterpiece to work with.....
Last edited by acropolite; 20-08-2005 at 08:07 PM.
I like your rendition best mike; who's to say what's correct, but yours is the most pleasing to the eye. Of course you had a masterpiece to work with.....
Which one is Mike's shot? I only see processing from Paul,Paul,Chris,David,Tony & myself... Am I missing something??
Thanks for your details Chris.. You have some new things for me to try next time as well..!!! Thumbs-up to this thread. Good to see such a good free exchange of info. I remember posting an imamge on another forum in the early days and some dude doing a re-process and coming up with heaps more detail. When I asked what he did, his arrogance was such that I have never vistied that forum since!! If someone screws with your image, then it is your right to know what they did I reckon. At least that's what I reckon.
Awesome stuff people.
Cheers
This is a great thread...great processing tips...and not to lose sight of the fact that if Tony hadnt got his focus and tracking and so on spot on there wouldnt have been all that detail to bring out in the first place.
Beautiful shots Tony, Robby and Paul. They all show up different aspects....all contribute a lot. Robby & Paul: I assume that you had different exposure times in the red and blue bands?? Does that account for Robby's having a greater blue component?
They are all the eact same image just processed differently. Just highlights how much artistic licence the photographer has when it comes to processing the image.
The other big factor is that everyones monitor is different and what looks great on one screen looks lousy on another.
I calibrate my monitors twice a month using a pantone Calibration Spyder to make sure I see things the way they are intended.
Thanks for going to all that trouble Chris.....thats going to keep me busy for a while once I work out what it all means....lol
And thanks again to all who spent the time to contribute to this post.
Rod....Robby processed the same stacked image as we all did...he just used different levels and processing technique....you too can have a go if you like.
I had a go at some longer exposures on the Lagoon for comparison and done some guiding test.....I need to fine tune a lot more with guidedog but thought its not worth doing tonight as its windy.
This is 3 x 120 second exposures ISO 400 stacked in K3CCDTOOLS guided with my SAC Mintron...I used a 6.3 focal reducer on my C11 which brought my FL down to around 1900mm....I don't know how to flatten the field.....I did no dark frames and no noise reduction.
![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
To be honest I don't really know what I did. Just mucking around with the levels and curves, both rgb and red, in small increments and switching back and forwards between to two adjument options.
I feel that part of the secret is numerous little adjustments, rather than big steps.
for the August photo challenge. Tough work, but someone's gotta do it...
