C13 Dragonfly cluster - 1st go - improving PS skills

[Russe]

Right, 2 nights ago I set my gear up before I went on nights on call...

the result is this picture of Caldwell 13 - the dragonfly cluster

85x 300s guided at ISO800 (Canon 450D) with the 130 pds/HEQ5

I can see the shortcomings... but am happy that I'm finally starting to get to grips with PS5... hope it works on your screens...

[Russe]

To compare - this is a single exposure:

[Russe]

some more slight changes

[glowingturnip]

looking very nice there, very sharp and some good colour showing - a tad green though, perhaps ?

I should have your M33 for you tonight btw

[Russe]

Working on the M33 too... One could spend days on processing... Good for rainy nights!

[glowingturnip]

my telescope's out in Spain, and I don't get out there nearly as much as I'd like, especially since I've used all my holiday days for this year, so post-processing is all I've got at the moment !

[russellhq]

Nice work Russe. Did I read your description correctly, is this 7 hours of data?

[LukeSkywatcher]

Never heard of it. Lovely cluster. Its all a bit green for some reason.

[Pete Presland]

definitely some good data, needs the colours aligning though as others have said a bit green still.

[Russe]

Yes, 7 hrs of data. I'm red/green blind,.. which doesn't make it easier.

Honestly, recording data is easy.

Processing data is darn hard. Even knowing the basics doesn't get you anywhere...

So, still learning...

Thanks for your messages!!

[sooot]

Colour blind here aswell looks perfect lol

[reddoss]

Russe - Are you imaging from Cardiff itself or somewhere  outside of the city where the skies are darker?

[glowingturnip]

Hey mate, fixed the colour balance for you, didn't touch anything else.

Weird one actually, seemed to be fooling photoshop, the histogram shows plenty of red there, though i'm blowed if I can see it.  Maxim got it though.

Let me know if you want the tiff doing

[Russe]

Russe - Are you imaging from Cardiff itself or somewhere outside of the city where the skies are darker?

Imaging from a backyard close to Heath hospital...

[Russe]

Hey mate, fixed the colour balance for you, didn't touch anything else.

{style_image_url}/attachicon.gif butterfly.jpg

Weird one actually, seemed to be fooling photoshop, the histogram shows plenty of red there, though i'm blowed if I can see it. Maxim got it though.

Let me know if you want the tiff doing

Tell you what! It's a screen issue - your pic looks TOTALLY red on my iPhone & iPad...

I'll upload the tiff to Dropbox once I'm back in the UK!! Cheers!!

By the by - I checked your go at my M33 again and NONE of your stars have a white blop in the middle and ALL have nice colour!

I've struggled two whole nights and failed on that one.

What I haven't tried yet is to remove all stars completely and work on galaxy and stars separately. The difficulty lies in WHEN to separate the data. When I check with the eyedropper tool, I'm trying to stretch at first until the brightest stars get close to 255,255,255. Actually, I try to keep it below 240 if I can. And then I took them out with "Dust & scratches". What I haven't tried yet was to do this with low fuzziness. I guess then you get your sharp stars across, you boost the saturation, stretch the histogram (controlling the upper edge), keeping the values below 255, eh? Obviously levels as well. And for effect, maybe some star glow. I think if is manage to stretch my stars without losing colour and without putting a white spot at the center I'd be well happy.

The galaxy seems somewhat easier to deal with, which can't be right...

[Russe]

[Russe]

Read the tutorial on star colour and will try that next. As well, I still have the guide for high pass filter to go through...

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/J_DIGIT/STARCOLR.HTM

[Russe]

http://astrocasto.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/lets-do-astrophotography-now-part-7.html?m=1

[Russe]

By the by, when do you remove a gradient? Very early before stretching, inbetween or at the end?

[poogle]

I don't know about others, but I try to remove the gradient right away (after croping the image the way I want it).

/Patrik

[glowingturnip]

totally red ??  yikes, not seeing that - maybe we should have a vote on it !

star colours - yeah, that Lodriguss guide is pretty good - key is to have a separate colour and luminance layer for them, then you can really whack up the saturation in the colour layer without it looking weird.  Several boosts of +10 in saturation is much kinder than all in one go by the way.  I cut my stars into a separate layer before stretching too much - only have Photoshop elements 10 so no colour selector, but I select the background and the galaxy with the magic wand and invert/enlarge/feather.

Agree with poogle on the gradients - crop off the stacking artifacts on the edges first so they don't mess with the histogram data, do a rough levels to get the peaks about 1/3rd of the way along the histo but leaving plenty of room either side so stuff doesn't get clipped later on, then do gradients.

[Russe]

another go at the same data is here:

http://www.astrobin.com/68810/