To give you a little background on this post let me share what I am trying to do:
One of the reasons for buying a wide lens (Askar ACL200) was to be able to play with composition for my Astro images in more widefield pictures first.
I have started to do panoramas of the night sky that I want to use in Nina for the Framing Wizzard. Those Panos should be as detailled as possible so that I do not miss too much of Nebulosity in the final composition.
I currently do one hour per panel with an ALP-T filter and later will do another hour with a Sii filter.
Editing of the panels should be efficient and kind of reproducible as in good nights 8 or more panels are possible, although currently I am happy when I get half of that number...
Here's my process:
Do 20 subs at 3minutes, gain 200 with my IMX571 based OSC Camera
Check and weed out subs with blink and subframe selector
stack images with wbpp with "Maximum Quality" preset, process separate RGB channels, disable blue channel processing (green and blue for Sii)
combine channels as HOO (or SHO)
run ABE with substraction
Adjust background in GHS ("linear" Low Clip to 0.000001)
Pre-Stretch for stars in GHS ("Arcsinh" Stretch Factor 7 works OK for my 3min exposures @F4)
Run StarXTerminator (Unscreen Stars) on Image, put the stars away
Undo StarXTerminator and the PreStretch
Stretch Image in GHS , switch to Log scale and try to get the maximum to the line in the middle of the 1st quarter make the historamm as wide as possible without it climbing up again at the right corner, it should roughly go down in a linear manner from the maximum.
Apply NoiseXTerminator Denoise 0.8, Detail 0.2
Save Main Image and Stars in 16bit Tif for PS
In PS open both images, open main image with Adobe Camera Raw and edit the picture so that the Nebulae show well with details and bring background levels in the range of 20-30.
Run Topaz Denoise
Sharpen if necessary (I use APF-R)
Then add the stars to the image and save.
Here are a few results in HOO done at >90%moon, is there another efficient way that gets better results?
Michael
One of the reasons for buying a wide lens (Askar ACL200) was to be able to play with composition for my Astro images in more widefield pictures first.
I have started to do panoramas of the night sky that I want to use in Nina for the Framing Wizzard. Those Panos should be as detailled as possible so that I do not miss too much of Nebulosity in the final composition.
I currently do one hour per panel with an ALP-T filter and later will do another hour with a Sii filter.
Editing of the panels should be efficient and kind of reproducible as in good nights 8 or more panels are possible, although currently I am happy when I get half of that number...
Here's my process:
Do 20 subs at 3minutes, gain 200 with my IMX571 based OSC Camera
Check and weed out subs with blink and subframe selector
stack images with wbpp with "Maximum Quality" preset, process separate RGB channels, disable blue channel processing (green and blue for Sii)
combine channels as HOO (or SHO)
run ABE with substraction
Adjust background in GHS ("linear" Low Clip to 0.000001)
Pre-Stretch for stars in GHS ("Arcsinh" Stretch Factor 7 works OK for my 3min exposures @F4)
Run StarXTerminator (Unscreen Stars) on Image, put the stars away
Undo StarXTerminator and the PreStretch
Stretch Image in GHS , switch to Log scale and try to get the maximum to the line in the middle of the 1st quarter make the historamm as wide as possible without it climbing up again at the right corner, it should roughly go down in a linear manner from the maximum.
Apply NoiseXTerminator Denoise 0.8, Detail 0.2
Save Main Image and Stars in 16bit Tif for PS
In PS open both images, open main image with Adobe Camera Raw and edit the picture so that the Nebulae show well with details and bring background levels in the range of 20-30.
Run Topaz Denoise
Sharpen if necessary (I use APF-R)
Then add the stars to the image and save.
Here are a few results in HOO done at >90%moon, is there another efficient way that gets better results?
Michael
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