M45 critique requested

what's there to critique?    No Guiding, No modded camera, no Filters! Stars don't look blown out. These are naturally bright stars. Maybe just a tad noisey. Color is perfect. I think you did a great job.

Only comment would be color.  But color is a personal choice, both hue and saturation.  Unless you are trying to convey color accurately.  Have you looked through an eyepiece at the stars in this cluster?  I would say yours is skewed too blue.  I think saturation is even more subjective. Again your choice.

If you want accuracy, you can try a photometric color calibration, such as found in Pixinsight.  Also look at the many wonderful posts on this site of the Pleiades.  Typically the more diffuse nebulosity at the top of your image has some reddish tones and looks whiter.  If you adjust, I think you will find that you will also see a better balance in your stars as well.

All in all a good image. The major criticism is the noisy background, which affects the smoothness.  The stars are ok: the shape is pretty good and the colors are nice; It is a bit out of focus, but you don't notice It until you zoom close. About the color of the nebulas, i think that overall It is a bit too much blue. You should mask the stars to work on the nebulas colors, and viceversa. All in all; great picture, i love It. CS

All in all a good image. The major criticism is the noisy background, which affects the smoothness.  The stars are ok: the shape is pretty good and the colors are nice; It is a bit out of focus, but you don't notice It until you zoom close. About the color of the nebulas, i think that overall It is a bit too much blue. You should mask the stars to work on the nebulas colors, and viceversa. All in all; great picture, i love It. CS

Regarding focus, is it off a bit or just needing a bit more sharpening?

Regarding color.  I sometimes see presentations here that are clearly off and I think it is because we work on computer monitors that do not always present color accurately.  So it would be worth calibrating your monitor to some standard.  Then if someone complains about color in your shots, you will be confident that it is their monitor that is uncalibrated.

Also, if you are working on your shots in strong light or odd lighting falling on your monitor, it can throw off the final balance.  For me, I have to use glasses to prevent strain on my eyes and the lenses are tinted brownish to reduce blue light strain.  So from time to time, I will switch to my clear glasses to check and be sure.  I have gotten comments on some of my early work that they looked too green, and that was the reason.

As far as focus issues mentioned, it is always better to be in focus than to have to sharpen stars in post processing.  But even still, if you are at best focus for your rig, you can still reduce star size by various means if you want to really make them tack sharp.

And I agree with everyone, nice photo!

@Alan
yes, i'm using a calibrated monitor.  i definitely juiced up the blues too much.  plus looking at the image like that for too long the mind easily adapts.

i was having a hard time with focusing the bahtinov image on screen in backyard eos.  i took an image with the bahtinov in place, see image, and the diffraction spikes looked right.  i guess i should've looked more closely at the image.  it is off a bit.  easier to see in the bg stars vs the brighter one i was focusing on.  glad you guys caught that!  

Thanks for a super image - the kind that makes me want to achieve even better photos… As I read the thread my question would be about color (colour).  Is the goal to achieve "ART" through the manipulation of the histogram and post image editing or is the goal to use filters to discover the elements of nature present in the star systems themselves?  Remember I am really new to this - so I am sponge about the replies you share with each other!  I like the comment of "framing" as in all art forms it is a matter of enhancing the subject.  I like the comment about the typical color of the other systems in the photo.  I like the second version much better!  Super!  Thank you!

thank you all again for the thoughtful comments.  I'm really glad i posted this as it has been very helpful!

a little bg about me, i'm an amateur landscape photographer with a lots of experience in that relm.  Don't consider my self a power PS and LR user but know my way around those programs enough to get the look and feel to my landscape images.  With regards to software for post processing Astro photos i'm still learning the ins and outs.  I'm using APP which i find easy to use, or at least get pretty good results right out the gate.  just need to further understand the finer details, like sharpening for instance.  As of now i'm assuming editing in APP is similar to editing a raw file in LR.  I'm assuming a fit file is similar to a raw file and that it needs a little bit of sharpening to remove the antialiasing filter effects?  just not sure how much to apply yet in APP before saving to a TIFF file for further PS touch ups with layer masks etc.

Yep, very familiar with all this being subjective and how online critique forums work.  Thanks for the reassure though!

with regards to the noise in the image.  are all the little fine points of light stars or are some of them noise/bad pixels?  see pic below.  APP is applying a bad pixel map and this from what i understand should be getting rid of hot/cold pixels.  but is it doing enough i wonder?

Looks very good to me.