now posted in the right section! jupiter 1st attempt! advice?

[willcastle]

and here it is zoomed in! was only using a x2 barlow that came with the scope and it was very early... quite low in the atmosphere so seeing wasnt excellent! and comments or suggestions on how to improve? thanks guys

[Spikey]

Hi Will, It's a very good start and you've got the bandiing captured. It looks like the exposure is a little high. Could you give a little more detail on how you captured and processed the image?

[Cloudwatcher]

I think Spikey is right about the overexposure.

It is easier to process an under exposed image than one that has been 'burned out'.

You might try Gaussian blur then tweak the colours and contrast before resharpening............. quick example below.

Good luck.

[willcastle]

wow cloudwatcher that is amazing! how did you do that?! was it on photoshop? i only have GIMP... so no snazzy software! but that is a dramatic improvement! please give some more details! thanks alot!

[willcastle]

oh and as a total amature... can u explain how u tweaked the colours? thanks so much! is that the eye of jupiter you brought out there aswel? very impressive

[willcastle]

can anyone help?? iv worked out how to do a gaussian blur on gimp.... iv worked out how to duplicate layers... iv worked out how how to get to the 'curve' settings and alter those.... i can use the 'sharpen' tool... i know how to find the 'colour balance' but i simply cant get the detail out aswel as cloudwatcher has above!

please help? i might post this in the image processing section aswel to see if anyone can help there

[Kokatha man]

Hi Will - I think we've conversed before but a couple of things re your images here.....whilst c/watcher has "tweaked" your image somewhat, the comments about your original posting here being over-exposed (and I'm unsure whether this is really the case...) means that in reality there's very little that can be done to improve it very much.....that old thing about making a silk purse.....

This is NOT to discourage you nor to criticise you attempts - heaven knows just setting up and "having a go" is a difficult and praiseworthy exercise:icon_salut: - but to advance your imaging the old "trial & error" bit is inevitable: I can well remember about 2&1/2 years ago Cloudwatcher "tweaking" the colours of an image I posted of Saturn here on SGL where I'd captured some great detail on the planet but the colour rendition of the image was horrendous due to the fact that I was using an achromatic refractor.....I had to bite the bullet and accept that the only way those images were really going to look ok was to do them as black & white - that or get another type of scope..!:hello2:

This I did and because I like to "learn my way" there were quite a few frustrating periods as I climbed the planetary imaging hill.....my honest advice to you is to forget this image (but it still has merit as a marker along the journey!) and concentrate the next time on:

(a)making sure your gain setting isn't too high - if you use WXastrocapture or another capture prgram that has a histogram, it should stretch no more than 80 -90% of the way across the horizontal axis.....or if you use a program without a histo make sure that no part of the planet appears to be "burnt out" meaning too bright or white or blurred due to the brightness etc

( work on getting the sharpest focus you can on any detail on the planet whilst looking at the laptop screen, this can be by looking at the 2 main bands (NEB & SEB) and trying to get more in their appearance than just 2 bands of colour (ie, look for detail within them) or if you can see something like the GRS focus & refocus untill it looks as clear and sharp as you can.....getting the edge of the planet's disk really sharp is a good starting point also to gauge things, and some just people start by concentrating on getting any moon that is within the view as pinpoint focused as they can to help with this process.

[willcastle]

hi there, thanks kokatha! yer i realise it is a pretty bad image in comparason to what is possible! iv seen beginners pictures that are better! but even so i wanted to know how cloudwatcher achieved the sharpening from my rubbish version!

i dont want to know because i think it make my picture amazing! i just think its an impressive bit of editing! is cloudwacher just an insanely good editor?

and as for my avi.... it seemed pretty good to me! the banding was moderately clear in my avi! most of the noise and grain in my image has come from my own attempts at sharpening it! so the video quality has more potential than the result i managed to come up with!

another member has kindly asked my to send him the video though to see what he can do with it!

thanks for the advice though! i dont know anything about histograms! but i use sharpcap and i used the default settings recommended by most planetary imagers but then i tweaked all the settings to bring the banding out!

my problem is probably that i over edit too much seeing as im not very god at editing! in the original version of my picture above... 3 moons were clear! but i kept tweaking the sharpness and saturation and everything i could until it became very noisy and the moons disappeared