Photoshop help (M51 colour?)

[Azure]

Hey all,

Just a question regarding image processing - I have a picture of M51, and want to see if I can drag some colour out of it. I have photoshop, but want to know the best way to go about this?

I know there's some colour hiding there, just need to bring it out

Here's the photo if you want to see (it's in .jpg here, I'm using .tif in PS)

Thanks

[stem1989]

first off its a great image! lots of detail in there.

I take it you stacked in DSS? did you align all the colour channels and bump up the saturation between 10-20%, its a good starting point (pre-processing) before taking the 16bit tiff into PS.

[Azure]

Yes I used DSS. I've fiddled a bit with the colour and saturation but I don't think it's made a whole lot of difference? Regarding colour that is. I can almost see a pale blue...or maybe my eyes are deceiving me!

[steppenwolf]

Try this, it is my favourite method:-

Start by creating a duplicate layer. From PhotoShop, select Layer - Duplicate Layer, set the name to 'soft' and change the blend mode to 'Soft Light'. Duplicate this new layer again, setting the name to 'lum' and change the blend mode to 'Luminosity'. You will immediately notice more vibrant colours appearing without the introduction of any artefacts. Select 'History', right click on the last entry and create a new document.

Flatten all three layers, by selecting Layer - Flatten Image, select and copy the entire image and then delete this new document as it is no longer required. This should bring you back to the original image after the first bit of colour enhancement.Now paste the copied data onto this image creating a new layer and delete the two layers called 'soft' and 'lum'. If the colours are too extreme for your taste,change the opacity of the top layer to get the effect that you want.

If you want to further increase the saturation, you can repeat this process several times but I would recommend that you carefully stretch the image between each enhancement.

I did this twice with your image to get the following more colourful image to which I also applied Gradient Xterminator:-

[Azure]

Thank you very much! That's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for(: Thanks for having a go too, I'll have a play myself and see what happens

[steppenwolf]

My pleasure - what I particularly like about this method is that it doesn't introduce any unwanted artefacts. Gradient Xterminator is an excellent filter but I tend to use it as a last resort to get rid of vignetting in images without Flats but there is no substitute for Flats even though they are without doubt a pain to capture!!!

[planetdnb]

Levels & Curves are where you want to be looking! There's some great photoshop plugins available too.