M42

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Originally Posted by rcheshire

Clearly, I have some distance to go to match that. Beautiful!

I'd say your data was very similar to mine - I did 6 L subs @ 120 secs, and then 4 subs of 120 secs for RGB on the first night. On the 2nd run, I did 6 L subs @ 6 secs, and 4 subs @ 6 secs for RGB, so not really more data than you probably got. I did use Maxim DL to stretch it though and did PP in Photoshop (stretching via curves and levels). I'm sure you *can* match or probably, better this to be honest.

Dave

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Core looks grey mate? (Side effect of Photomatix - bleh)

[Octane (Humayun)]

You've ruined what was a good image to start off with by blowing everything to grey via the Ph*t*m*t*x routine.

Be very, very careful with the shadows/highlight tool; this one is way overused and its tell-tale signs are readily visible in the way it ruins contrast in an image. It is a destructive tool in that in itself it cannot be applied as an adjustment layer unless you create a visible/merged stamp first, copy that stamp layer, and then play with shadows/highlights -- of course, with a layer mask, with the layer itself set to very low opacities.

H

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

I'd say your data was very similar to mine - I did 6 L subs @ 120 secs, and then 4 subs of 120 secs for RGB on the first night. On the 2nd run, I did 6 L subs @ 6 secs, and 4 subs @ 6 secs for RGB, so not really more data than you probably got. I did use Maxim DL to stretch it though and did PP in Photoshop (stretching via curves and levels). I'm sure you *can* match or probably, better this to be honest.

Data is similar. There's some tricks to using Pixinsight that I've yet to learn, so it's a different approach. Looking at your results, I'd say that there is a lot more data available to stretch.

I know that the HDR option is not popular with some people, but I'm tempted to try it out in PI out of curiosity.

Did you use the factory calibrated frames, or did you calibrate your own.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Originally Posted by troypiggo

Core looks grey mate? (Side effect of Photomatix - bleh)

Yeah, you're right. Oh well, no harm in experimenting!

Originally Posted by Octane

You've ruined what was a good image to start off with by blowing everything to grey via the Ph*t*m*t*x routine.

Be very, very careful with the shadows/highlight tool; this one is way overused and its tell-tale signs are readily visible in the way it ruins contrast in an image. It is a destructive tool in that in itself it cannot be applied as an adjustment layer unless you create a visible/merged stamp first, copy that stamp layer, and then play with shadows/highlights -- of course, with a layer mask, with the layer itself set to very low opacities.

H

Yeah, agreed H. I personally rarely use the shadows/highlights tool, but thought that I'd have a play with it. It's up there now, I'll probably play with the original image a bit more to see if I can tease some more details out of it. Thanks for the honest comments, much appreciated.

Originally Posted by rcheshire

Data is similar. There's some tricks to using Pixinsight that I've yet to learn, so it's a different approach. Looking at your results, I'd say that there is a lot more data available to stretch.

I know that the HDR option is not popular with some people, but I'm tempted to try it out in PI out of curiosity.

Did you use the factory calibrated frames, or did you calibrate your own.

I used the factory calibrated frames, just for ease of use. I've d/l both sets though. There's more data there, go find it!!!!!

cheers,

Dave

[mill (Martin)]

Looks impressive and you could even do some selective sharpening to bring out more detail.
But be careful not to oversharpen