Hi AstroBin Community,
I am looking for areas on where I can improve my image I took of the Western Veil Nebula in late August last year over 5 nights. I used my ZWO ASI183MC Pro, Radian 61 (with its original objective lens), Optolong L-Ultimate and Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer GTi.
This is one image I have been struggling to process for quite some time, especially considering I want the background Ha filaments to stand out just enough without overpowering the OIII structures. I tried using Photoshop, Lightroom and PixInsight to produce something I am happy with, but I cannot seem to find a happy medium.
One of the biggest issues I am having is both StarNet2 and SXT removing the finer filaments. SXT leaves really clean backgrounds whilst removing nebulosity whereas StarNet2 keeps much more filaments but leaves a messier background which I have to clean up in post.
Attached is my most recent edit of this data. I don’t think I’ve done a good job with this one (as has been the case for many months) as I notice it’s quite “mushy” and soft whilst having a somewhat magenta-ish tint to the Ha filaments. The saturation seems washed out as well from what I can tell.
Looking forward to receiving feedback for this image so I can take it further than before!
Zak
📷 Western Veil Nebula.jpg