M51(Cannes Venatici)

[astro mick]

An image of M51 taken last night.Moon light was a problem,so had to try and remove Gradients.

80ED Refractor F7.5/MX716 mono/LRGB Filters.

L=6X600secs.

RGB=12X300secs.

No calibration.

Finished in Photoshop 6.0

Thanks.

Mick.

[gurneyfan67]

Beautiful! An amazing amount of detail and color.

[Quatermass]

Never get tired of seeing the images of this amazing galaxy' great job.

[Jessun]

Mick that's a great image! The colours are beautiful and just right. Very impresive.

Did you run this through Noiseware btw?

[astro mick]

Thanks everyone for your comments.They really are appreciated.

Jesper,yes i ran it through Neat Image.

I processed the original in Photo-Shop,then duplicated the image,and loaded this into Neat Image.I ran the programme with the noise filter at about 50%.I then blended this into the original,and reduced the opacity to around 45%.I hope this gives a more balanced image.

So i cheated a bit.

Mick.

[ollypenrice]

Not cheating. Most people use noise reduction, particularly on faint signal. I tend to noise reduce a layer and then only apply it to the faint signal which I choose using colour select. There are other ways of course. Inverse luminance masks etc.

Well done in the moonlight anyway.

Olly

[Jessun]

Agree, not cheating at all. I just saw the 'filtered' suffix, and wonder what your image looks like without? I am just guessing here but I think it looks very good without. The detail is all there and the colour balance is to kill for...

[astro mick]

Hi Jesper.

Here are two further images.

The first is the present image without the Filter.

The second is a re-work of the same image,just processed differently.

This one has not been Filtered.

Which do you prefer?

Mick.

Colour is a fairly subjective thing,and striking the right balance is not easy.

[Jessun]

Mick I like the one on the left above a lot! On my screen there's a blue element to the background but rather than cut that perhaps red and green could be lifted to a similar value - it's perhaps borderline clipped now. The galaxy is in my opinion really really good with deep gold on soft blue so protect that whilst working on the background.

All personal preference in the end. But I love the colours!

[Gina]

Beautiful images

[astro mick]

Thanks again everyone.

I,ll do my best Jesper,glad you like it though.

Mick.