Feedback on my latest images

Processing Request for feedback
7 replies•363 views
Anderl avatar
Anderl avatar
Hey guys,

inspired by Chris thread https://www.astrobin.com/forum/c/astrophotography/critique-requests/rcc-how-to-make-a-picture-more-catchy/
I would like to ask you what I could do and work on to get "better" astrophotos. 

i am a few years into this hobby and still feel like an absolute amateur. I've got my first aapod2 few days back which is nice but have (in my opinion) often problems to find the right balance regarding contrast and saturation. Another problem I am aware of is that I need more practice in using pixinsight.

https://www.astrobin.com/urj14o/C/
i am tending to produce very pastel like pictures, what is a picture style that I generally like, but at the same time I often wished I would have gone for a more natural image style. 

apart from my tendency to pastel like images, what do you guys think that I should and could do differently? 

cs and thanks
Andi
Tommy Blomqvist avatar
Tommy Blomqvist avatar
Some want their images to be as natural as possible as if they had eyes with the same configuration but with incredibly more sensitivity.
If you deviate from this with pastel colors or hubble palettes, suddenly there is no right or wrong.

I think your picture is very good technically and then it's up to taste how you want to handle colors and shadows to highlight the details or information you want.

smile
Supportive
gmadkat avatar
gmadkat avatar
I think your images are very good too, the details are beautiful. Color and saturation tends to be subjective!
Congratulations on the aapod2, well deserved!

I am not familiar with your camera, are the stars true color? That is one suggestion if not.
Respectful Supportive
Anderl avatar
Anderl avatar
gmadkat:
I think your images are very good too, the details are beautiful. Color and saturation tends to be subjective!
Congratulations on the aapod2, well deserved!

I am not familiar with your camera, are the stars true color? That is one suggestion if not.

my latest pictures are all narrowband only. 
true color stars are a great idea, I will definitely try that. 

cs
Andi
Brandon Paskel avatar
Brandon Paskel avatar
looks good. can you share your processing workflow? it looks like there could possibly be a blue gradient to the right of sadr- but could also very well be faint data given the deep integration time
Engaging
Anderl avatar
Anderl avatar
Brandon Paskel:
looks good. can you share your processing workflow? it looks like there could possibly be a blue gradient to the right of sadr- but could also very well be faint data given the deep integration time


after stacking I use 
- graxpert for gradient removal
- spcc
- star x terminator
- now I process the nebula part by saturating it, bringing out the dark structures, sharpening it with some sort of apf-r
- if necessary I use the curves tool and color masks to get more control
- now I would stretch the stars, bring them back in und use blurx and noisex terminator

that's more or less my total workflow. I am going back and forth a lot while processing and sometimes use photoshop for final color or contrast adjustments.
Brandon Paskel avatar
Brandon Paskel avatar
im not familiar with graxpert unfortunately, but i can definitely recommend pixinsight's DynamicBackgroundExtraction. i would try and see if the blue to the right of sadr gets extracted with DBE. if not then you're good and that's probably real data. what makes me think its a gradient is the fact it gives a blue tint to the dark nebulosity
David Webster avatar
David Webster avatar
I think your images are pretty good.  I like what you're getting with the colors.  I need to learn some of that! 
It's difficult to critique someone's images for them when I'm still trying to figure out my own.  BUT, if you're going to just use the NB Stars, I'd at least try and pull out the green.  Anymore I try and replace my NB Stars with RGB stars, OR run SCNR on my extracted NB stars and then re curve them before putting them back in the image.  But again my images are all over the place with processing attempts.
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