[RCC] How to make my Rosette Nebula to a Top Pic?

Hi Philip,

I am a reviewer, so i am one of those who promote Top Pics nomination to Top Pics. In order to make it to Top Pic, a nominated picture needs to be promoted at least by 3 reviewers, so this is a very personal view:

I can promote a maximum of 3 pictures per day. On some days, (very, very rarely) i promote no picture, because to me all nominees have too many flaws. More often, I have to let one or more pictures go, just because of the 3 per day maximum. That means, that sometimes I can not promote a picture to TP evem I feel it is worth it.

As to your pictures, I can tell you the differences in my point of view:
Your Rosette Nebula has a very nice noise control. You did not remove all noise, there is (for me) just the right amount of noise left in the darker areas. Your stars a nice and round to the corners. They are sharp, but not over sharpened, most of them still have a soft limb.
Overall sharpening is fine, but your HA layer shows a few artifacts from sharpening.  Overall contrast is nice. Your framing for this object is pretty standard, nothing wrong with it but nothing extraordinary.

Your Seagull Nebula (again, this is just my opinion) falls behind in almost every aspect: Star shapes are round to the corners, but you did too much of noise control in combination with oversharpening the picture, resulting in many artifacts even in very bright areas. Less would be more in this case, still I 'liked' it, because I did like your color scheme a lot.

So, how to make a top pick? If I knew, all my pictures would be TPs. With my pictures, I try to make them technically as clean as possible: gradient removal, noice control, sharpening, contrast, colors and last but not least star shapes are the most important things I care for when processing.

But there is one last tip I can give to you: We all see Rosettes after Rosettes this time of the year and it is very hard to create that one picture that really stands out from the mass. A rarely featured target recieves most probably more attention.

The voluteers on AB who work in the IOTD process do their best to be objective and fair, but it is not a contest after all. Not recieving an award on AB does not mean that your pictures are bad.

Cheers
Fritz

Hello Fritz and Hartmuth,

many thanks for your responses!!

@Fritz This is realy helpfull analysis of my Pictures, i just realized the denoise / sharpening artifacts in my Seagull Picture, i will try to take more care about that in future!

It is also interesting, that you only have 3 Votes a day ;) didn't know that, but it makes sense. 
About the standard Objects: Because of this i was very very happy, that my Pic was nominated  

So far, very much to learn after just 15 Months in Astrophotography ;)

Thanks a lot

Philip

As a reviewer, I must confide that there were many high-quality Rosette images in my queue this winter.  It wouldn't surprise me if some of them missed Top Picks status because the reviewers spread their promotions among many high-quality images of the same target.

Funny that right as this topic is being talked about, a Rosette is IOTD today.

@Salvatore Iovene Yes that's really funny ;) But this IOTD is very nice for me ;)

@Andy 01 Thanks for that hint. I just brighten up the Background!

I would love it to get more Constructive Critic! 

CS
Philip

Patrick Graham:
Being new to AB, and only having uploaded a few Images to my  page, my question is;  do the reviewers pick from the individual's page uploads, or is there a link where they are submitted from which you reviewers choose?

Here is a description of how the selection works:

https://welcome.astrobin.com/iotd/

CS
Hartmuth