Hi,
So I downloaded some free image data of 8x 8mins with 8 darks and bias each for the Orion Nebula at ISO800 to try and practice with before I even get a camera. I got these free from a site who asked to be referenced for the data and genuinely cannot find it in my history now 😛 . I watched about 20 mins total of a tutorial video and took a crack at it which took probably a couple of hours total practice just to set a baseline to move from. The attached are the before and after but I know 100% I could have made this a lot better with experience. The main issues I ran into were attempting to mask the nebula colours along with the star mask and subsequently getting proper contrast on the black of surrounding space. I made a total balls of the mask so if anyone has any pointers on an easy method to incorporate those colours into the original mask that would be great.
In the photo you can still see a faint "halo" of redish/orangy colour that was much more pronounced and widespread but in order to get rid of it I had to lose some of the nebula colour also. I am familiar with the method of adjusting the contrast, curves (the "astro" curve etc) and levels and moving the dark slider to get some of the contrast back along with slight tweaks to the individual colours and even output levels but I found the one thing I constantly battled was getting the blacks black without affecting the rest which I guess is due to not masking correctly. If someone could even point me towards a previous thread where this was covered I would greatly appreciate it
Cheers,
Mark