[RCC] Melotte-15

Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight Processing Request for feedback
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akshay87kumar avatar
akshay87kumar avatar
Request your critique on post processing on the Meloitte-15.

Tools: PixInsight - BXT/NXT/SXT, Curves Transformation, Color Palette (SetAstro)

Source of data: OortCloud on Cloudy nights shared his data

Alex Nicholas avatar
Alex Nicholas avatar
Overall - it's a lovely image. 

I feel it could benefit from:
- a little bit of darkening in the bottom left and right, and top right. It appears like maybe flat frame overcorrection occurred there or potentially overly exuberant gradient correction. 
- a global boost in contrast via a relatively gentle s curve. (Being wary of the stars, as you've got them about perfect)
- a global boost in either saturation or chromanence via the curves tool to bring those colours out just a bit more!

Again, its pretty stunning as it is, just to my eyes, the bright corners are a little distracting and there is an overall lifelessness due to it being a little washed out for colour and contrast.
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akshay87kumar avatar
akshay87kumar avatar
Alex Nicholas:
potentially overly exuberant gradient


It was indeed a very harsh gradient which I have struggled to correct, even after using multiple tools. I would agree I have seen images that have higher contrasts, and the corners are darkened, that look far better. Thanks for the feedback on the contrast and saturation - usually I have been overdoing it, and looks like this time I fell short of it!
Georg N. Nyman avatar
Georg N. Nyman avatar
I think it is overall a nice picture which could benefit by:

1. eliminating the brighter corners, they are not helping the overall impression
2. Increasing slightly the saturation
3. Making the picture a bit more crispy - maybe better said - get more power into the picture
4. IMO - the magenta tint of the background is not very beneficial - but that is probable a matter of taste…

Thanks for asking!

CS
Georg
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Pawel Piechnik avatar
Pawel Piechnik avatar

Lovely picture. I challenged that object recently and through this experience I can tell that you gave it a good end very subtle characteristic. The color Pallette is great as well. on my end, I gave it one more unsharpmask + self-ImageBlend to make it literally glow.

AoP avatar
AoP avatar

I will just say it is a great image. I recently… today, finished processing my image of Melotte 15. I think there is a lot of challenges in processing this area of sky. So much contrast in this nebula. I like your color palette. I only use OSC cameras currently, and without that separation of ha, sii and oiii from a mono camera it makes it even more challenging to get really sharp without the unsharp mask or MLT. Nice work!

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