M63 with 32" Richey-Chretien

[MartinB]

Oh well I can dream! Jim Misti has put together a fabulous resource on his web site. Many of his aligned and stacked fits are available for processing. What's more he gives several worked examples which you can work through. Oh, and if you have a quarter of a million dollars you can buy the scope - the mount's thrown in for free! Here's my effort after reading through his how to do it guide.

http://www.mistisoftware.com/astronomy/index_fits.htm

(click to enlarge)

[Naz]

Nice find Martin, plenty to go at there.

naz

[centroid]

There are the great imagers, like Jim Misti, and then there's the rest of us

Dave

[GingerNut]

Hi Martin,

I had a go at M101, can't get as much detail out as they have, any tips?

Also I've not used the lum image, how and where do you add that?

Noels Tools -

1. Create RGB

2. levels & curves

3. Space Noise Reduction

4. levels & curves

5. Space Noise Reduction - levels

6. Color Blotch Reduction - levels

7. Enhance DSO and Reduce Stars - levels

(click to enlarge)

This is their image

(click to enlarge)

I'm gonna have another go from scratch today, so would appreciate some feedback please?

Yours Roy

[MartinB]

Your best be Roy is to pick one of the worked examples. Jim goes through exactly what he did but it does involve using CCDsharp which is free software from Software Bisque. He runs an initial deconvolution using this. It's easy to use but should only be used when the signal to noise ratio is good i.e. very good quality data. He also does digital developement in Maxim which does an automated stretch. This isn't essential and you can do just as good a job using levels and curves in Photoshop.

To add your RGB to your luminance - paste the RGB onto your lum image. Select the "difference" blend mode to make sure the images are aligned - they will be in this case but if they aren't you have to select the chunky arrow in the tools palette which is the move tool and adjust the position. Once you are happy that they are aligned change the blend mode to colour. That will then show the image - it works like magic!

If this is just the RGB it looks like you are nicely on track. Process the luminance then add the colour. You could increase the saturation of the RGB a bit - image/adjustments/hue and saturation or ctrl-U. You can make this adjustment after you have combined with the lum but before flattening the image.

You will be amazed at the effect of combining the luminance with the colour

[GingerNut]

When I paste the RGB onto the LUM, color blend mode is greyed out.

When I past the Lum onto the RGB, I can color blend.

Both methods give me the same B&W image?

Yours Roy

[MartinB]

Aha! Sorry Roy, forgot to mention - Before pasting you have to change the mode of the luminance image from greyscale to RGB - Image/mode/RGB. BTW you can paste the lum onto the colour but you then have to use luminance as the blend mode.

[GingerNut]

Hi Martin,

Thanx for all this..................I think I'm getting somewhere

So when is the best time to add the Lum?

I've added after geting the RGB to it's best, now I'm having to go all through the levels and curves again and it's bringing loadsa noise :shock:

Yours Roy

[MartinB]

Don't use levels and curves to bring down the noise - just go back and reduce the amount of stretch you applied in the first place. You can always stretch more later but if you over stretch it's difficult to put the genie back in the bottle later without badly clipping the histogram leading to an over processed look. You will need to use some noise reduction. There are different ways to do this. One way is covered by my primers but Jim does it a different way by creating an inverted layer mask. If you go into the worked example of M63 you will be able to find out how this is done - he explains it much more clearly than I can. It's seriously clever.

[GingerNut]

Thanx again Martin,

I'm starting again today following Jims tutorial..................so lets see where we get.

The practice is good for me eventhough I shall only be taking colour shots with a DSI 2 Colour.

Onward and upward 8)

Yours Roy

[GingerNut]

There ya go

I'm quite pleased with this

In the end I combined some of Jims, yours, and Noels Tools, to produce this result, I have also sent an email to Jim asking some deeper questions about the use of Maxim for the stretches. I seem to prefer doing it this way rather than PS.

(click to enlarge)

Yours Roy

[MartinB]

Looks good Roy

[SteveL]

OMG! CCDSharp is magic! (Slow, but magic)

Right, time to find an easy way to split my OSC RGB FITs files into R+G+B fits...

[MartinB]

It's the biz Steve esp for NS8 images which tend to be a bit oversampled. Doesn't do as much with ZS66 images.

[SteveL]

Spent most of my *cough* busy afternoon finally finding time playing with my copy of ImagesPlus.... RGB DeConvolution, very nice

[GingerNut]

So do you need to 'deconvolute' colour images? or is it just the Lum ?

Yours Roy

[SteveL]

I believe the examples show to deconvolve the Lum because thats the most important channel in an LRGB image... me, on the other hand, only do RGB as a one shot colour, so most of the time I wont be using a Lum channel (maybe Ha every now and then)