[RCC] M101: Our First Project Since Starting This Hobby Three Weeks Ago

Salvatore Iovene:
I think you forgot to link or attach the image. 😃

indeed

andrea tasselli:
I guess you need to check your lens as the field coma is pretty significant and you might need a field flattener/corrector for the sensor you're using. And avoid all this *XT kerfuffle for the moment being. Keep it simple and keep it nice. Just HT and Curves to get started. Bump up saturation as the picture is nearly color-free. And remove the gradients, too.

Thanks for the input! I took some of your advised and uploaded a new revision:

https://astrob.in/mu1s91/B/

It would have been nice to see a cropped version of your file to get a good look at the galaxy details….but that aside, a couple of comments/suggestions that hopefully you'll find useful:

1.  You might want to do a background neutralize before you do color calibration…
2.  learn to use SPCC over PCC,
3.  Almost never do ABE (except in very uniform fields); always prefer DBE instead.   ABE will create dark halos around galaxies and globulars that you'll struggle to get rid of except by darking the whole background too much….
4.  You'll want to use SCNR (degreen) as one of the last things in non-linear processing for OSC, especially for galaxies and clusters; not so much for nebula.
5.  You (and others) will like your images better if you spend time framing the subject (by dynamic crop) before you're done.

Best wishes, and good luck in the learning curve…..   DougS.

@Joe Linington  this is pretty much my same workflow except adding in the RGB combo early on. I've been doing EZdenoise near the last step. Seems to work well there

If this is what you are producing 3 weeks into this hobby, you're gonna pick it up pretty fast.

I looked into this a while back, and the last thing I read was suggesting to do BXT after SPCC, but before Historgramtransformation or any stretching. Here is a comment from the creator of BXT. Please correct me if there is new info out there.

https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/spcc-after-blurxterminator.19928/post-121205

All manners of color calibration, not just SPCC, should really be applied before deconvolution.

Joe Linington:
That is a fantastic first image. Your workflow is a bit out of order IMHO,

Stack
Crop
DBE or GraXpert
BXT
SPCC
SXT or Starnet2
then stretch, curves, saturation etc.
NXT (I still haven’t figured out if it’s better here or in linear or both)
Recombine. 

This being said, I know that there are 5 ways to do any one thing in PI and I’ve seen very accomplished editors totally move this order around. But I am sure that BXT works best on linear data, before any colour correction or noise reduction.

I looked into this a while back, and the last thing I read was suggesting to do BXT after SPCC, but before Historgramtransformation or any stretching. Here is a comment from the creator of BXT. Please correct me if there is new info out there.

https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/spcc-after-blurxterminator.19928/post-121205

BXT can change the shape of the stars, which will affect SPCC.    Just look at the correction stats before and after BXT, you'll see.    I still kinda despise what it does to stars, especially on RGB data (vice OSC) if your guiding wasn't perfect on each channel.     I haven't watched any of the tutorials on it, just trial and error, paying close attention to how it affects the data.

Joe Linington:

andrea tasselli:

I looked into this a while back, and the last thing I read was suggesting to do BXT after SPCC, but before Historgramtransformation or any stretching. Here is a comment from the creator of BXT. Please correct me if there is new info out there.

https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/spcc-after-blurxterminator.19928/post-121205

All manner of color calibration, not just SPCC, should really be applied before deconvolution.

I was referencing the recent discussion between Russell Crowman and Adam Block on Youtube (Adam Block's Channel) where they discuss this topic specifically and recommend the opposite of above. So confused now.

I went back and re-watched the video with Adam Block and Russell Crowman and I was very wrong (thanks for pointing that out so I could stop that mistake). Colour correction is before BXT and when I run my own test, what a difference. Changing just that solved an issue I was having. Luckily I have only done 2 images completely with BXT so not much re-work to do.