BIG blue supergiant, how to tame him???

[tonedeaf]

i´m pretty much new to AP:

so my result of yesterdays session...

the humidity was blaaaah

but hey at least the horsehead ist distinguishable (with some imagination)

but Alnitak is sooo big and blue (ok maybe cause he´s a blue supergiant)

after all on some fine posted pictures he looks not that oversized...

how to tame that star?

30x2min 1x10min (w/o darkframes ) @iso800

[Jannis]

It's a nice resulth of teh nebula. The star is indeed a pain to get nice with only one set of exposures. I surly ahven't been able to do it yet at least.

Maybe the easiest is to do some lower-ISO/short exposures to get the star nice and a take the ncie stacked resulth with low noise and replace the overexposed area with layers in PS or similar?

[tonedeaf]

It's a nice resulth of teh nebula. The star is indeed a pain to get nice with only one set of exposures. I surly ahven't been able to do it yet at least.

Maybe the easiest is to do some lower-ISO/short exposures to get the star nice and a take the ncie stacked resulth with low noise and replace the overexposed area with layers in PS or similar?

seems reasonable i´ll give it a try...

hoping the skies will clear in the next weeks

[ollypenrice]

Short subs aren't the answer. You need a special stretch starting from the linear data. Use a curve which rises steeply then flattens early. You may need several to get Alnitak looking right.

It's surprising how much detail there is in long subs (above was from a stack of 10 minute subs in RGB with a CCD and fast apo.)

Once you have a decent looking Alnitak paste the main image on top and use a large well feathered eraser at low opacity to start letting the bottom layer Alnitkak through. Don't take off much in any one go and make the brush progressively smaller. You can adjust the brightness and colour and saturation of the bottom layer as you go.

How bright you choose to leave it is a matter of preference. I went for 'still fairly bright' to maintain a relationship between Alnitak and the other stars.

Olly

[stevetynant]

that is one fantastic image :grin:

[Jannis]

Interresting,olly. I havent tried it like that before. Will for sure give it a try as well. Asuming the star isnt burned out too much it sounds like a better way indeed. :-)

[tonedeaf]

wow...

thanks olly, i´ll try that...

...so much to learn in post processing the images...

btw fantastic image

[ollypenrice]

Here's another example of the technique as applied by Ampleamp;

Olly