Quote:
Originally Posted by alpal
Excellent picture Jacob,
I just wonder if I could suggest improvements without sounding pedantic?
Here goes anyway -
Minor adjustments:
The picture seems a little dark on my monitor.
I would have boosted the brightness slightly with curves and
used a blurred layer mask on the center of the galaxy - local adjustment -
to increase contrast once again using curves.
The dead center of the galaxy has either exceeded the well depth or has
been stretched too much? (255 out of 255 bits.)
Only your original FIT stacks can answer that.
When pixel peeping there are either red rings or blue rings around many stars and
there are also blue blobs at about 10 o'clock on the edge of the galaxy.
I don't know what caused that - maybe a star mask?
cheers
Allan
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Hey mate.
Your pixel peeping serves you well! I had a closer look at the stars and yes, there are blue/red rings (not sure how I missed it). Looking through the layers in PS shows they are an artefact that PS introduced when I tried to reduce some chroma noise I saw in the stars (happens sometimes). Removed that layer and no more rings!
As for those blue blobs at 10 o'clock, they are legit. However, I did just patch up a couple of them as StarXterminator partially removed a couple of them so went a bit "blobby".
The center of the galaxy was borderline blown out before stretching (about as bright as many of the stars!). I did have a play with masking it but tended to end up a bit flat. Could play with it a bit more but might just leave well enough alone for now.
Is is the background that seems dark to you or the whole image? I target a background brightness of ~25/255 (or about 10% greyscale), which tends to look about right to me, and looks bright enough on my monitor. Once I get to <15/255 the image takes on a more "inky black" that I prefer to avoid. I brightened the galaxy somewhat, which does bring the galaxy closer to mid-tones.
Cheers,
Jacob
P.S. I uploaded a new revision on Astrobin
