NGC3722

[hjw]

Recent posts by mike005 triggered me to put more effort into processing. So yesterday I spend the whole evening tweaking a picture of the Carina Nebula. I learned a lot about DSS (for example don't tick "superpixels" if you want full resolution ) and even more about PS, which I am still not familiar with. Spend some time uploading the full resolution image to my gallery here only to find out that it is resized anyway. Anyway, I would like to share my efforts and encourage all comments on what I could improve.

I uploaded the much larger (16x) full resolution picture to astrobin:

http://www.astrobin.com/full/175476/0/

Cheers

HJ

[MikeODay]

Wonderful widefield image HJ. I like the colours and you have heaps of detail in the nebula.

I also love the star field in your larger image on astrobin - the more one zooms in the more faint and colourful stars one finds.

I'm still quite new to astrophotography but I think you might still have more 'information' hiding in your image. I have struggled over time with Photoshop to really strongly stretch the shadows in an image without destroying it with noise. I recently downloaded the free 60day trial version of PixInsight and I've been playing around with it's Masked Stretch process that seems to a do good job. You could download it and give it a go. If you do, the online tutorials you will find with a google search will definately help with the relatively steep initial learning curve.

Cheers

Mike

[hjw]

...I think you might still have more 'information' hiding in your image...

Cheers

Mike

Hi Mike,

there is nothing like a good challenge . I have tried Pixinsight (and any other software in my disposal) to enhance the faint outer regions of the nebula. However, I am not sure which version I prefer. The first version in this post is more "balanced" for lack of a better description while the second obviously shows more of the nebula. As always, any comments are welcome!

Cheers

HJ

[MikeODay]

I like both but I agree the first one looks more natural. What does it look like if you blend the two together with 50% weighting?

Cheers

Mike