Surprizing Black Eye!

[ollypenrice]

Most black eyes probabaly come as an unpleasant surprize but this was the reverse. I just tooked at four luminance subs taken with Yves' setup in the second half of last night to see how the project was going. This is how they looked after a bit of processing. The galaxy, M64, is tiny and floated a little sadly in the middle of the full frame chip but this a crop. The subs were half an hour. Colour ASAP but we have an early evening thing going on as well.

Olly

[sologuitarist61]

Fantastic image Olly - looks fab in B/W so looking forward to the colour version!

[Gina]

Terrific as usual

[JamesF]

That looks like it could be stunning once the colour is added. I look forward to seeing it.

James

[Tom OD]

Thats a cracker Olly. What Lum processing steps did you do if you donlt mind me asking?

Tom

[ollypenrice]

Thats a cracker Olly. What Lum processing steps did you do if you donlt mind me asking?

Tom

Cheers all. Tom, something like this;

DBE in PI then Ps.

Basic stretch to get background to 23.. Check for faint fuzzies and none found.

Lasso just the galaxy and stretch further, ignoring the blown core.

Copy layer underneath, noise reduce just the outer ring of the galaxy. Apply as needed.

Noel's Local Contrast Enhance, layer on top, apply as needed.

Wavelet sharpen just the core using an Astra Image plug in. Use as layer underneath, erase top layer as appropriate. Just the detailed inner parts. Save.

Back to linear to make an inner core stretch, hardly stretched at all. The inner core was harsh so I blurred it. Paste main image on top and softly erase the blown inner core region, adjusting the bottom layer for a smooth blend.

The very inner core is saturated from the 30 min subs so I'll use the RGB data to make a new core not saturated and replace the present one.

It's my usual way; copy layer underneath, process for just one bit of the picure and then let the processed version through with the soft erasor where you want it.

Olly

[AndyUK]

Wow- I can't believe the detail in this, or lack of noise, with just 4 exposures...