Stellar Winds of Melotte 15

[TheDecepticon]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

...like comenting on Elle Macphersons left nipple being slightly higher than her right ...still Elle Macpheson!

Really, I hadn't noticed!!

Another beautiful narrow band image. Love narrow band and the colours it produces!! Can't wait to afford a set of decent 2 inch ones myself. Was the sole reason for going back to a mono camera. Great stuff!!

[Craig_L]

Astounding image KEN.

I think I wouldn't have noticed the "softness" of the neb if a few others hadn't commented - I was so entranced by your image. And maybe that is only an issue because the stars look sharp in comparison to the neb. But maybe that's what you had in mind and makes this image more magical!

[Ken Crawford (KenC)]

Originally Posted by Craig_L

Astounding image KEN.

I think I wouldn't have noticed the "softness" of the neb if a few others hadn't commented - I was so entranced by your image. And maybe that is only an issue because the stars look sharp in comparison to the neb. But maybe that's what you had in mind and makes this image more magical!

Thanks Again for the kind comments,

The softness is a processing choice, and it relates to how much contrast is involved. There are many ways to seletively sharpen areas (which I did) but my goals here were to show the OIII curtains that flow over and around the evaporating formations. Removing this haze would make things appears sharper with more contrast but I was going for the hazey stellar winds result.

I am pleased that so many pointed this out as the comments are so important to know what people think and how they view the image.

Kindest Regards,

[irwjager (Ivo)]

Originally Posted by Ken Crawford

Do me a favor, could you please click the link below the image details to download the jpg? let me know if you see a difference between the zoomify and the downloaded jpg. I am suspecting the conversion looks different with older Flash plug-in.

Thanks!

Hi Ken,

Like SkyViking reports, I can see a fairly dramatic difference in saturation between the Zoomify and the JPEG version in some parts of the image, notably in the dust. The increased color contrast in the JPEG definitely makes details standout that aren't visible in the Zoomify version. Personally, I still would've preferred a tiny bit of selective sharpening, but looking at the JPEG I can appreciate your angle so much more.

Happy to send you some screenshots of the Flash renderer output if that helps! It's not cool a Flash app should modify your work like that...

[Ken Crawford (KenC)]

Originally Posted by irwjager

Hi Ken,

Like SkyViking reports, I can see a fairly dramatic difference in saturation between the Zoomify and the JPEG version in some parts of the image, notably in the dust. The increased color contrast in the JPEG definitely makes details standout that aren't visible in the Zoomify version. Personally, I still would've preferred a tiny bit of selective sharpening, but looking at the JPEG I can appreciate your angle so much more.

Happy to send you some screenshots of the Flash renderer output if that helps! It's not cool a Flash app should modify your work like that...

Thanks! I have noticed this too and looks like a color space conversion of some sort. I just started having problems with it.

You comment about the sharpening makes me feel good as I did apply quite a bit very selectivly with masks. My goal was to apply the sharpening but make it very hard to tell that I did.

Anyway, the zoomify image is robbing me a bit. will have to do some digging..

Thanks again for the vaulable and honest feedback . .

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Ken Crawford

Anyway, the zoomify image is robbing me a bit. will have to do some digging..

Great shot Ken. Zoomify will output tiles to JPEG. I think the standard default compression is 75% quality from the original plus any bitmap display in the flash player will loose some quality as well.

[Ken Crawford (KenC)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Great shot Ken. Zoomify will output tiles to JPEG. I think the standard default compression is 75% quality from the original plus any bitmap display in the flash player will loose some quality as well.

Corrrect, I did buy the full sourse code and was able to goto 100% jpg. I think I found the issue on this image as a color profile difference.

Thanks!

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Ken Crawford

Corrrect, I did buy the full sourse code and was able to goto 100% jpg. I think I found the issue on this image as a color profile difference.

I'm not familiar with the effect of the color profile but the original color depth needs to be brought down to 8bits prior to export. Level 12 quality I assume is 100% lossless compression. Levels of tiles are usually between 1 and 4 depending on the original shot pixel width and height but you have to realise you'll only get the sharpest views if your zoom level hits one of the tile's level resolution. Those are discretes levels (1,2,3,4). Not unlike 'showpixel' when you step-zoom in/out with CCDStack. Anything else will be interpolated/blurred by the flash renderer.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Colour profiling is extremely important.

Convert to sRGB before saving for web and keep the Adobe RGB or whatever extended colour space you're using in the original *.PSD.

H

[Fabiomax (Fabiomassimo)]

Amazing! My first impression is that it seems in 3D!!
Fabiomax

[lebowski (Paolo)]

Ciao Ken.
why a base RGB on S2-Ha_O3 ?
The star field does not show the basic RGB, do you served to give more contrast?
Bye Lebo

[jase (Jason)]

Great image Ken. Not an advocate for Zoomify as yet. The resampling is less than ideal. Sometimes getting back to basics of providing different resolution images gives a level of assurance (instead of being burnt by sloppy code).

[Martin Pugh]

Highly detailed image Ken, wonderfully processed. It is such a good rendition of this object, if not a little too saturated for my liking.

I have recently processed a data set of this object belonging to a guy out in Pennsylvania. I will ask him if I can post it here for comparison purposes.

cheers
Martin