M31 with 200mm lens

[Dave Smith]

Well here is a less pink attempt which I am quite happy with. Mainly I selected the stars and reduced the saturation while selecting the galaxy and enhancing the saturation.

Dave

[drumsolo]

Wow fantastic image! Dumb question but was this taken piggy back?

thanks

Stuart

[Dave Smith]

Wow fantastic image! Dumb question but was this taken piggy back?

thanks

Stuart

Thanks. The camera was mounted directly onto my NEQ6 mount and it was guided.

Here is now a (I hope) a final version. Apparently the pink star effect can be caused by thin high cloud which will bloat the stars but more so in the red. On examining my subs, I can see some variation which does suggest that this is a possible explanation.

Following some advice from Dennis (roundycat) I did the following

1) Make a duplicate layer in photoshop

2) Manually highlight any offending stars

3) Go to channels and highlight the red channel.

4) Go to Filter-other-minimum and set to 1pixel

5) Change the fill to 80%

6) Return layer to RGB

7) Flatten

8) Repeat as necessary

9) Continue with normal processing.

I did try initially to select all brighter stars but those that didn't

have the red halo became cyan in colour and it didn't look natural.

I am now happy with this, but will need to keep a close watch on sky conditions while imaging.

Dave

[JimStan]

I am also learning PhotoShop, but one trick I already know is substituting one color for another. You can select a single star that is representative of the pink cast, and use it for the sample color you want to get rid of. Then you either substitute another color, or drop the chroma value of that existing color so it becomes whiter. If you restrict the value to close to the sample star, your galaxy will not lose its value. I hope I am explaining it well enough for you to grasp the concept. Look in the "color tools" and you should be able to figure it out.

Good luck, Jim S.

[JimStan]

I followed my own advice on your picture, and came up with a result that was quite a bit like yours, without resorting to layers, etc. Nice work, and I LOVE how one can tweak a digital image to produce the desired result.

Jim S

[Dave Smith]

Thanks Jim. Another idea to try.

Dave

[Dave]

Nice one Dave. And great progress on the processing too.

[Dave Smith]

Nice one Dave. And great progress on the processing too.

Thanks Dave. I'm still not entirely happy with it though.

Dave

[Dave]

Thanks Dave. I'm still not entirely happy with it though.

Dave

Tee Hee! Now that sounds just like how I keep hearing my head saying about my image processing most of the time.

"Just one more tweak!" Or you learn a new method of doing something else... and on you go round that loop.

[theodoros1978]

this is an amazing shot! better than Lion's OSX wallpaper