Lodestar Live Colour Correction

[Paul81]

Hi All,

Been absent from the forum again for a trip away, but I did get some time to spend working on colour correction. I have implemented hue and saturation controls, well in truth the mathematics under the hood and to try it out I have been using my LL test harness mode and using the keyboard to control the hue and saturation. I have posted some initial results. I have also been experimenting with a sharpen filter but not happy with the results.

Once I get the UI side of things sorted I'll probably make a short video to demo work so far.

Sorry everything has been a bit slow recently, its just a very busy period at the moment!

M1 using data provided by DoctorD:

M83 and M97 using data provided by Martin:

Still more to do but getting there! 

[HiloDon]

Hi Paul,

I had an opening tonight and got M27.  I sum stacked five 15 second images.  Here are the FITS files and the image.  I was pretty happy with it considering the cloud cover we had.

Image_M27_2014.9.28_22.06.16_00000.fit

Image_M27_2014.9.28_22.06.31_00001.fit

Image_M27_2014.9.28_22.06.46_00002.fit

Image_M27_2014.9.28_22.07.01_00003.fit

Image_M27_2014.9.28_22.07.17_00004.fit

Hope this is what you needed.  Let me know if you need something else or more.

Don

[Paul81]

Hi Don!

Spot on - I wanted some more colour test data to try out the colour correction work to see if I can get something similar to the recent photoshop edited M27s!

Hopefully will have some time tomorrow night to have a play!

Thank you for grabbing the data!

Paul

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Dom543]

Hi Paul,

Color saturation control or enhancement would be a great addition to LL. If you are already working on it, then I may delay getting an image processing package... This is not any kind of urging. We fully understand that you are developing LL in your free time and that work must come first.

Thank for all your past and future efforts!

--Dom

[Dom543]

Don,

I am amazed how much more green you are getting in your M27. I wonder, if moisture in the air is filtering out a larger proportion of the green spectrum.

In Seattle I needed to average 60 sec exposures to get decent colors in M27. Now in New England, I get comparable images by stacking 30 sec subs. Apparently from Hawaii, even with clouds, 15 secs is better than 30 or 60 secs on Mainland. They say that people in Hawaii live longer. Not only that, but they also accomplish in 15 seconds, what takes 60 seconds to achieve at other places...

Cheers!

--Dom

[HiloDon]

Don,I am amazed how much more green you are getting in your M27. I wonder, if moisture in the air is filtering out a larger proportion of the green spectrum.In Seattle I needed to average 60 sec exposures to get decent colors in M27. Now in New England, I get comparable images by stacking 30 sec subs. Apparently from Hawaii, even with clouds, 15 secs is better than 30 or 60 secs on Mainland. They say that people in Hawaii live longer. Not only that, but they also accomplish in 15 seconds, what takes 60 seconds to achieve at other places...Cheers!--Dom

Hi Dom,

I'm sure the atmosphere has a big effect on our results. I do notice a reduction in quality when we get higher moisture conditions. If it is clear though, I can see the Milky Way clearly. We live on Mauna Kea at an elevation of about 600'. I guess that's why they build world famous observatories here. The next one is the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) that should be completed in about eight years. I can see some of the observatories from our property, but the TMT will be out of our view.

Don

[Paul81]

Hi Dom,

Yep working on some colour enhancement so hopefully you can hold fire on purchasing an image processing package!

I am gearing towards releasing an alpha when it is done - alpha because i will not have fully optimised the code and I wanted to get some feedback from the community first. I am also conscious development has slowed down due to the day job (plus I have a holiday coming up) and people would like to use the new display processing features so don't really want folks to wait around until I have finalised all the code and such.

Oh might be worth checking out a freeware image processing package like GIMP - it should be able to do colour post processing!

Paul

[Paul81]

So I have had a quick play with Don's (lovely) M27 data and here are two takes using the V0.11 controls previewed in the video and the additional hue and saturation controls (still via the keyboard - working on the UI).

One is sum stacked, the other median.

One thing I have noticed is that in V0.10 (certainly for mono) it is almost like there is one 'good answer' for the display settings for a given object, you could tweak a little but ultimately it was like you have one solution to get the best looking image. With V0.11, it seems like there are more options, and I have found myself almost endlessly tweaking (even mono), a guess a bit more like the hardcore AP folks. Maybe an indication things are on the right track as you can almost make the object 'feel different' by using a different set of display options. Might just be in my head but will be interesting to see what others think.

Paul

[HiloDon]

Those look good, Paul. Much better color balance than I was getting. Is the first one sum stacked? The second one looks a tad better. More detail and a bit brighter. But, both are very close.

Your comment on having to do more tweaking is interesting. More controls usually mean more complexity. Simplicity is one of the features of the Lodestar with LL. It's also another reason I like mono. One less thing to worry about. I look forward to trying the new version.

Don

[Paul81]

Hi Don,

Yep the first is sum stacked and the second median. I think the new controls offer more flexibility if a user wishes, but you can still get results quickly. Simplicity and fun are always the aim! 

Paul