Advice needed! Correct colours in M27??!

[Mr Bergman]

Hi all, 

recently posted my M27 in the photo gallery, but realized afterwards that I could get much more info out of the data. So I reprocessed it once again. 

This is just a few subs with roughly 2 and 3 mins exposure time with my 190MN on a neq6 pro. 

This time I focussed on the central regions, which were given an extra stretch and also a high pass filter. Due to my unmodded DSLR I also made the red curve a bit steeper in LAB-mode to make sure the details would be visible. ( Is this ok, or is it against astrophotography-processing-ethics?:-)) I also made the blue colours a bit more green, which I presume the 5007 Angstroms should be? ( I might be wrong..) 

Now I have to ask you; what do you think about the colours? Are they correct? Is the red a little bit to pink? ( In that case - How do you fix that? )

Any comments are much appreciated since I am a novice in processing. 

Best regards, 

Erik

[daz]

Colour is very subjective Mr Bergman - what looks good to you, some might find too green, or blue, or pink!

Check out the one here - http://skywatcher.com/gallery.php

And Tim's et http://www.astrobin.com/37111/ - although this is very very deep!

I like yours, the colour balance looks good and the structure in the gas is nice and delicate!

[iksose7]

I think with processing you just go with what ever looks good to you. If you try to please everybody you will fail! I try to only emphasize colour that is already there rather than changing it, i'm currently processing M27 myself.

The background here looks good to me but i think the nebulas colour needs adjusted. I would say the centre is too green and the reds too purple, but those are only my personal colour preferences for this neb  

[lensman57]

Hi all, 

recently posted my M27 in the photo gallery, but realized afterwards that I could get much more info out of the data. So I reprocessed it once again. 

This is just a few subs with roughly 2 and 3 mins exposure time with my 190MN on a neq6 pro. 

This time I focussed on the central regions, which were given an extra stretch and also a high pass filter. Due to my unmodded DSLR I also made the red curve a bit steeper in LAB-mode to make sure the details would be visible. ( Is this ok, or is it against astrophotography-processing-ethics?:-)) I also made the blue colours a bit more green, which I presume the 5007 Angstroms should be? ( I might be wrong..) 

Now I have to ask you; what do you think about the colours? Are they correct? Is the red a little bit to pink? ( In that case - How do you fix that? )

Any comments are much appreciated since I am a novice in processing. 

Best regards, 

Erik

The colouring you have is typical of the unmodded DSLR. As the sensitivity to Ha is quite a lot lower ( or even none existant ) compared to blue and green combined such  result is expected. The relative lack of star colour even with the short sub lengths also confirms this. I think that you have extracted as much natural colour from the data as possible but perhaps a marginal improvement could be achieved by a different colour balance routine.

A.G

[JamesF]

For me the image is a bit biased towards the blue and I don't think I'd have boosted that so much personally, but as has already been said it's very much a matter of personal taste.

James

[Mr Bergman]

Thank you, daz, iksose7, lensman and James. Good answers from all. I know this is about taste as well, but still I want to be close to a "natural" look more than personal taste. But that seems to be hard in this case! 

As it is now, the reds are a little bit too purple. I agree! 

Daz - thanks! Had a look at others via your links. 

James - I actually made it more green, it was even more blue from the beginning! Mostly blue signal from my unmodded dslr. 

Iksose - I would really like to see your M27 when you are done processing! 

Lensman57 - yes, I will have a look at colourbalance again. 

/Erik

[jtlandreneau]

I think it looks great! I had the same question for my shot, for whatever reason my center was a very bright green with almost no processing. I figured that's what it wanted to me, and left it as is

[Mr Bergman]

Thank you jtlandreneu!

[Astrosurf]

Gorgeous picture. I would certainly make the red a true red and the blue more green. If I'm right, the green is caused by ionised oxygen, but correct me if I'm wrong!

Alexxx

[Mr Bergman]

Thank you Alexxx! Yes the colours are a little bit strange, but it is due to my unmodded camera, as A.G earlier pointed out. You are right about the oxygen! I will revisit this target in the future with a modded camera instead:-)