Pillars of Creation created...

[MarsG76]

Hi everyone,

As I setup and started imaging the Cat's Paw nebula, when I checked on the system 30 minutes later I was DISSAPONTED to find that clouds rolled in... I waited for the clouds to clear but no luck... While I was waiting for the clouds to clear before packing up I decided to reprocess my M16 data that I captured across 7 nights in June and July.

Here are the reprocessed images... I'm quite happy with these seeing that the data was captured through Baader Ha, SII and OIII filters on a full spectrum modded uncooled Canon 40D, nights are quite cool tho, about the 6 degree C mark so I guess that helped.

I concentrated on lowering the amount of purple halos around stars and attempted to preserve maximum detail, the purple halos are still there but not as severe as in the first version.

I still have a bit of noise/grain in these images, but when I ran the noise reduction filter I started to lose detail, and the level adjustment that the detail wasn't effected too much the amount of noise reduction was not worth changing. I think this was the best balance between noise and detail.

I have AstraImage and it's great, but I heard that Topaz Labs Denoise is a good noise removal algorithm... Has any one used it, if so how does it compare to the likes of MoiseWare Pro, Astra Image and photoshop?

Clear skies...

[xtreemchaos]

great images mate,stuning detail and colour, i ant noticing any noise mate. thanks for sharing.  charl

[lensman57]

Lovingly " Created ".

A.G

[MarsG76]

Lovingly " Created ".

A.G

That title was meant to be "Pillars of Creation Re-Created" :-/

great images mate,stuning detail and colour, i ant noticing any noise mate. thanks for sharing.  charl

 

It's slight but it's there...

I color balanced the pics attached and lowered the saturation... I think they look better with less vibrant colors.

[JohnnyD333]

Color Balance looks great.  Im just happy when the pillars show up in my images 

[MikeODay]

Great capture. I like the detail in the Pillars. Well done.

[MarsG76]

Thanks for the kind comments ya'all... I'm in the process of exposing the cat's paw nebula (NGC6334)... At last I have a clear sky... Looking like it might be clear tomorrow and night after that also.... Looks like I'm going to be very, VERY sleepy at work.

[ollypenrice]

Very sharp pillars. Impressive.

Personally I don't think it's which NR routine you choose, it's how you apply it. I apply it as a layer underneath and then use various selection tools to select noisy areas to be removed from the top layer with the eraser. This allows you to remove the noise partially using a semi-opaque eraser.  You can re-select areas which need more, and so on.

I would never apply NR globally.

Olly

[Uranium235]

For a DSLR, thats astonishing!

To zap the purple stars, in Ps call up the saturation box (crtl+U), select magenta, then reduce the saturation to suit. You can also back that up with colour noise reduction in Ps (strength 10, preserve details 10, colour noise reduction 10). That will turn your stars white, ready for you to add RGB stars if you wish.