M27 - 'soft' colour + sharp lum = sharp colour

[nytecam]

Just had a little play with a couple of brief exposures of M27 via my M12 SCT @ f/3.7 [via f/3.3 FR in colour] and f/10 [native f/ratio B&W]. The colour image cropped and enlarged to match the luminance image and merged via Deepskystacker. I've long been aware that colour can be quite 'soft' yet acceptable if the luminance detail is there so my demo seems to work

[nytecam]

Full size @ http://www.cloudynights.com/photopost/data/526/11401m27c-mmergemg.jpg

[dark knight]

I presume you were using photoshop, so basically you create a new layer, convert this layer to greyscale then flatten/merge the 2 images. What blending settings did you use, ie opacity, blending mode etc. I really like the colours in the combined image, great job.

[nytecam]

I presume you were using photoshop, so basically you create a new layer, convert this layer to greyscale then flatten/merge the 2 images. What blending settings did you use, ie opacity, blending mode etc. I really like the colours in the combined image, great job.

Thanks for your interest. Never really got to grips with Photoshop! I used the basic SX Lodestar camera controlling s/w to extract colour in both images but set the saturation to zero [monochrome] for the f/10 image. The colour image rescaled and cropped to match mono image and rotated/merged in Deepskytracker with final tweaks and titling in PaintShopPro.

[dark knight]

Well it certainly makes it very pleasing to the eye.