M51 1200

......taken on 9th/10th Aug 2011 from my back garden......M51 is a bit low for imaging, & disappeared behind some trees, so I had a limited number of subs......& a fair bit of light pollution......not a good mix really, still it helps develop the post process skills that I know I am short on......

Excellent shot, considering :) How many subs? What length?

13x5min at 1600iso.

I've probably over processed, I've been trying out loads of new things on the processing side.

the result looked 'okay' when I was doing it, but it looks like the shrinking to 1200px & jpg compression has done horrible things to the IQ......it now looks like a water colour!!!

I'll have to play some more with it.

Still a very nice image - well done

Looks like your cliiping the black point or very near to it and probably losing some detail because of it. The very dark black backgrounds looks quite unnatural.

Dark halos around stars indicate over sharpening of the image.

excellent feedback Shaun - many thanks......I have a tendancy to over do things on the PP side. I'll take a closer look at the points you identified & have another play. Cheers!