Sombrero Galaxy
First, this is a fine image. Very enjoyable. Definitely great data from DeepSkyWest. 7% - almost no tilt; good round stars. Bortle 2! in my dreams. I wish you would add your processing description. Processing is subjective and personal - my thoughts: I might reduce the star size a bit, maybe use Adam Block's de-emphasis method) and also tame the star color down. I think the contrast in the dust band is too high; you might be able to pull more details if you back the contrast back a bit. For me, the background is just a bit too black. Again these are my amateur personal preferences and observations. -john
Helpful Insightful Respectful Engaging Supportive
John Favalessa:
First, this is a fine image. Very enjoyable. Definitely great data from DeepSkyWest. 7% - almost no tilt; good round stars. Bortle 2! in my dreams. I wish you would add your processing description. Processing is subjective and personal - my thoughts: I might reduce the star size a bit, maybe use Adam Block's de-emphasis method) and also tame the star color down. I think the contrast in the dust band is too high; you might be able to pull more details if you back the contrast back a bit. For me, the background is just a bit too black. Again these are my amateur personal preferences and observations. -john
Ah great point, I will post some processing steps in my post.
Yeah totally agreed actually regarding the black contrast. I was having issues getting a flat field, and ended up using the PS plugin AstroFlatPro and probably went too hard on the dark points.
Regarding star size, this is about as aggressive as I could seem to push them without getting artifacts
. I am using the Adam block method, and was seeing some very weird artifacts if I pushed it more than I already had. I agree though that the stars could be smaller, and would be more aesthetic if they were.
Beautiful image, love the colors and the galaxy! One suggestion is to soften stars and agreed on the background being a bit dark.
gmadkat:
Beautiful image, love the colors and the galaxy! One suggestion is to soften stars and agreed on the background being a bit dark.
Yeah def agree on background
. I will post a revision with some improvement there. By soften stars do you mean shrinking them?No, not shrinking, I was seeing the stars closer to the galaxy had softer glowing edges but further away they had sharper edges, I sometimes use convolution in my stars on a separate star layer to fix this, and blend back.
gmadkat:
No, not shrinking, I was seeing the stars closer to the galaxy had softer glowing edges but further away they had sharper edges, I sometimes use convolution in my stars on a separate star layer to fix this, and blend back.
Oh I see. Any guidance on what decon steps you take to do this? I can give it a whirl!
I use both Pixinsight and Photoshop, within Pixinsight I separate the stars using either StarXTerminator or StarNet2, and on the star later, I run convolution and adjust the settings for StdDev until I am happy with the result. I usually take a small preview so I can see in detail what is happening. Then I use Pixelmath to recombine the starless and the stars. The GAME mask is a good way to protect the stars around the galaxy if you want to control the areas you do this in.
In Photoshop, I can actually control it a lot better. I take the starless which I save as a 16 bit tiff from Pixinsight above, and in Photoshop, duplicate layer and use Camera Raw Dehaze and Texture to adjust until I like the result. You can in Photoshop also use masks to do only some stars or regions in the image and blend back. I then save and either blend the star and starless in Photoshop, or save as tiff, and blend it back in Pixinsight using Pixelmath, as above.
In Photoshop, I can actually control it a lot better. I take the starless which I save as a 16 bit tiff from Pixinsight above, and in Photoshop, duplicate layer and use Camera Raw Dehaze and Texture to adjust until I like the result. You can in Photoshop also use masks to do only some stars or regions in the image and blend back. I then save and either blend the star and starless in Photoshop, or save as tiff, and blend it back in Pixinsight using Pixelmath, as above.
Helpful