M51 Processing Request

I don't own or use PI either, but I'm giving it a try with Siril, and maybe Astrosharp.

For a zoom camera lens, that is a remarkably sharp image of M51.

Not in the original, rather soft focus. Besides, isn't really fast at f/6.3.

Okayyyy, so here's what happened:

I did a normal process with Siril (no sharpening), and some tweaking with Photoshop Camera Raw, and I got this image (which is cropped):

It lacks sharpness and color, and there's full of noise in the image, but Siril is horrible compared to PI.

So then I brought this image into Astrosharp, and I got this image, which is worse in color and details in more extended parts of M51, but sharper in the middle:

Using "second beta" Astrosharp model:


So then, I was annoyed, and I wondered what would happen if I superimposed the blurrier one as luminance with 50% opacity, over the sharpened one, and so I did that with Photoshop, and I made more tweaks, like lowering highlights and increasing shadows, and I got this:

It's noisy, but it doesn't look too bad, right?

Now somebody has to copy my process and make a full image version instead of a cropped one...

I had to crop it because Astrosharp freezes a lot and my laptop is not old; Astrosharp is glitchy too, so a cropped image is easier to deal with.

Here is mine.
I took into Pix, used SCNR, BXT, Localhistogram.
Took into Affinity and used its BG removal function.
Took into Capture one and sharpened a bit.

Here is my attempt:

Gotta say i would have never guessed it was a zoom lens based on the data alone. Pretty good stack i would say, the background is a bit strange though. I think you may have to go through your subs and see if there is high cloud or something like a neighbor's porch light on in some of them or something, and then get rid of those before stacking. Judging from the file name you have plenty of data to spare, so you can afford to ditch the bad subs for sure.

My processing workflow was as follows:
In Pixinsight:
Crop, DBE, BlurXterminator in correct only, Image solver, SPCC with IMX183 settings, SCNR green at 0.5, BlurXterminator again with stars at 0.15 and nonstellar at 0.8 with correct only unticked. Asinh stretch at 1000, slight histogram transformation and exported as 16-bit TIFF for Photoshop.

In Photoshop:
Downsampled the image a little bit, StarXterminator, work on the starless layer and star layer separately finalizing the level of stretch. NoiseXterminator at a few different points. Smart sharpen applied to both layers at slightly different settings. Saturation increased to my taste and exported as the JPEG above.

You should consider getting PixInsight for BlurXterminator alone, it really is a match made in heaven for galaxy images.

So once my acquisition is good, I'll put my money into processing.

This seems a bit backwards to me. How will you know if your data is good if you can't process it correctly. 
Processing tools are cheap compared to acquisition hardware.

Ohhh, zoom lens?! I thought this was from something like a 4 inch high quality triplet refractor; this is unbelievable for a zoom lens.

Thank you! I'd like to believe I'm really pushing the limits of what's possible with a zoom lens. Some day I'll invest in a dedicated scope.

Okayyyy, so here's what happened:

I did a normal process with Siril (no sharpening), and some tweaking with Photoshop Camera Raw, and I got this image (which is cropped):

It lacks sharpness and color, and there's full of noise in the image, but Siril is horrible compared to PI.

So then I brought this image into Astrosharp, and I got this image, which is worse in color and details in more extended parts of M51, but sharper in the middle:

Using "second beta" Astrosharp model:


So then, I was annoyed, and I wondered what would happen if I superimposed the blurrier one as luminance with 50% opacity, over the sharpened one, and so I did that with Photoshop, and I made more tweaks, like lowering highlights and increasing shadows, and I got this:

It's noisy, but it doesn't look too bad, right?

Now somebody has to copy my process and make a full image version instead of a cropped one...

I had to crop it because Astrosharp freezes a lot and my laptop is not old; Astrosharp is glitchy too, so a cropped image is easier to deal with.

Thanks for sharing your edits. Your first image looks near identical to how my first fully stretched layer looked like in photoshop. I use an arcsinh curve stretch method multiple times and then I will run StarXterminator and screen blend an mildy stretched version on top of the starless version. 

I agree despite having 210 darks, it's still pretty noisy when the stretch is pushed to the limits, I had to run noise reduction multiple times to get the sky to look as smooth as it does in my image. 

I downloaded and tried Astrosharp and yeah it's pretty buggy. I have yet to utilize it's full potential because I read that it requires Siril to obtain a PSF measurement to use for the setup which I have yet to do.

Oskari Nikkinen:
Here is my attempt:

Gotta say i would have never guessed it was a zoom lens based on the data alone. Pretty good stack i would say, the background is a bit strange though. I think you may have to go through your subs and see if there is high cloud or something like a neighbor's porch light on in some of them or something, and then get rid of those before stacking. Judging from the file name you have plenty of data to spare, so you can afford to ditch the bad subs for sure.

My processing workflow was as follows:
In Pixinsight:
Crop, DBE, BlurXterminator in correct only, Image solver, SPCC with IMX183 settings, SCNR green at 0.5, BlurXterminator again with stars at 0.15 and nonstellar at 0.8 with correct only unticked. Asinh stretch at 1000, slight histogram transformation and exported as 16-bit TIFF for Photoshop.

In Photoshop:
Downsampled the image a little bit, StarXterminator, work on the starless layer and star layer separately finalizing the level of stretch. NoiseXterminator at a few different points. Smart sharpen applied to both layers at slightly different settings. Saturation increased to my taste and exported as the JPEG above.

You should consider getting PixInsight for BlurXterminator alone, it really is a match made in heaven for galaxy images.

Thank you! With enough careful focusing and low enough HFR values across my subs I was able to get some pretty clean data. 

To your comment regarding bad subs, I will admit I'm one of those integration addicts that probably hoards onto bad subs when I could still stand to cull some. While I pulled out all the subs with bad shaped stars from my collection, there are probably a few in there that were taken with high cloud cover. Also my sky towards the north is generally more light polluted that towards the south. 

Fun fact, I actually completed work recently on a little side project where I developed a Python script to parse my sub file names and sort by starcount and hfr, then rename the subs with a quality rating based on that and a 4-digit serial number. 

I really love the blue color you were able to achieve and I feel is the most accurate, I assume this was because of SPCC in PI? Photometric Color Correction?

Glad to see that some people still use Photoshop as a compliment to the processing workflow and not exclusively PI. 

I'm one of those people who have always had the lingering thought "can't I execute the same basic processing functions in photoshop, so what's the point of ever venturing into PI?" however I know PI has vastly more functions that are tailored specifically towards an astrophotography workflow. 

Thanks for processing and sharing!

Fabian