Processing advise!!!

[Craigyboy3542]

Hey guys

I finally got to do some imaging recently and and got this one of M31.. i am fairly happy with it as it is my first really attempt with my new equipment. 

However i am still having lots to learn on the processing side of it and would love some tips/advise how to make my image better. i posted this question in a Facebook group with a link to the data i used someone processed and made it look a lot better in my opinion but they used IRIS to stack them and StarTools to process the image. as i use DSS, Lightroom and Photoshop i couldn't ask for advise how he did it. 

Please can i get some help for the software i use  here is a link to my data feel free to use it.

Settings

Canon 1100D (not modded)

HEQ5 (no auto guiding)

30 x 45 sec exposure

ISO 1600

SW ED80

My image 

Image processed by someone else 

[Steve Ward]

You could try Doug's tutorials on YT , very well put together and easy to follow for beginners ... 

https://www.youtube.com/user/namregd/videos

[swag72]

I'm guessing that you didn't take any flats? In my experience, that would be an instant win win, as you would remove the darker out edges and give yourself more processing leeway. That wouldn't even require learning any processing tricks

[ollypenrice]

I'm guessing that you didn't take any flats? In my experience, that would be an instant win win, as you would remove the darker out edges and give yourself more processing leeway. That wouldn't even require learning any processing tricks

Yes, flats are so important...

The first image has the colour balance out. It's too red. Aim to get the top left of the histo peak aligned in each channels (in Ps use the Histogram All Channel View to see where you are. You do this by moving the left hand slider right a bit to move individual channel peaks to the left.

Also use the colour sampler in the Eyedropper tool to measure the background sky. I like it to be 23 in all three channels. The second image has been black clipped, meaning the Levels black point slider has come in too far towards the pedestal. This is something to try hard to avoid and measuring the background brightness is the way to avoid it. Below we see an image about to be black clipped!

Your next priority would be to tease out more colour. Avoid Saturation. It boosts noise. Try making 2 copy layers. Set the blend mode for the top layer to Soft Light and flatten it onto the second layer. Set the blend mode here to Colour, put in a Gaussian blur of 0.5 and flatten. Repeat to taste.

Olly

http://ollypenrice.smugmug.com/Other/Best-of-Les-Granges/22435624_WLMPTM#!i=2266922474&k=Sc3kgzc

[nichendrix]

Olly do you have any tutorial for processing M31?

[Craigyboy3542]

Well i decided to try Nebuloisty out just using it on the trial version at the moment hence the black lines, but happy with the result and think i will be ditching DSS