M31 - reprocessed

[alan4908]

Since it's been rather wet and cloudy recently....a reprocessed attempt using the data from my second attempt at M31.....  I was trying to bring out the M31 dust lane colours/details which I found challenging to say the least. If nothing else I've learnt a lot about the LAB colour space in Photoshop. I've also come to the conclusion that post processing an image is probably the most difficult part of imaging.

LIGHTS: 42 x 300s at -20C. DARKS: 30; FLATS: 40; BIAS: 50.

Alan

[xtreemchaos]

lovely image mate,nice colour and detail.  thanks for posting   charl.

[callisto]

Lovely image, well done 

[red dwalf]

That's very nice.

[laudropb]

Very nice image. Thanks for sharing.

[pyrasanth]

Very nice image. I love M31 as much as my cat- she is helping me type!

[pipnina]

That's an incredible image! if you wanted to improve it, though, some bright patches have a little greeny tinge and perhaps the blue could be boosted. But the blue is probs personal preference.

Very nice image. I love M31 as much as my cat- she is helping me type!

My cat doesn't help me type any more, she got spooked by the computer waking up whenever she stood on the keyboard.

[alan4908]

Thanks for all your repiles. 

I find it amazing the amount of detail that you can extract during post processing.... if you know what you are doing. So, given that my post processing abilities are a bit hit and miss at the moment, my conclusion is that I need more practice  

Alan

[pipnina]

Thanks for all your repiles. 

I find it amazing the amount of detail that you can extract during post processing.... if you know what you are doing. So, given that my post processing abilities are a bit hit and miss at the moment, my conclusion is that I need more practice  

Alan

Indeed, post-processing makes a huge difference to images. Aren't computers lovely! (If a little annoying)

[StargeezerTim]

Nice one... no imaging for a week or so for me so thought I would take your lead and have a go with LAB colour (thanks for sharing that, i've never heard of it till now) and also high pass sharpening with an M31 I did earlier!

I agree processing is the hardest part but so rewarding when when you tease some nice detail or colour out...

P.S Yours is much better....

[des anderson]

WOW,WHAT A PICTURE.ONE OF THE BEST I`VE SEEN.THANKS FOR SHAIRING. DES

[blinky]

Very nice, lovely colour!

[Astrosurf]

Excellent pic. To bring out colour, have you tried the following?

Make a duplicate layer

Process it as well as you can

Change Blending Mode to Colour

Push up Saturation

Gaussian Blur quite high

Change opacity to suit

[alan4908]

Hi Alex

Thanks for your comments. 

On your suggestion, that's interesting. I'm currently following a LLRGB workflow which takes a One Shot Colour image and very early on splits the image into Luminescence (gray scale) and RGB components  I then do all my sharpening/noise reduction on the Luminescence layer and all my colour boosting/blurring on the RGB layer (which I also convert into LAB mode for part of the process). The Luminosity is brought back in two steps (hence the two L's) to create the final image. I haven't tried your suggestion of changing the blending mode to colour - I will try it !

Alan 

[glowingturnip]

yeah, I follow a very similar workflow - splitting a debayered image into L and RGB and separately processing those, before recombining later on.

The blending mode to colour is doing exactly that, it nominates the layer with the colour blending mode as being a chrominance layer and uses the luminance from what's underneath.

[Astrosurf]

Interesting. How do I get PS to split a one-shot image into channels??

[StargeezerTim]

Interesting. How do I get PS to split a one-shot image into channels??

Also, does anyone have any experience of good tutorials to teach this LLRGB processing?

[abdulaziz]

Wow nice procces how I can bring color out is there any video tutorial

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[alan4908]

Hi All

if you want to find out more about LLRGB processing, which includes how to split a one shot colour into Luminesence and RGB... then I'd suggest you have a look at this video tutorial from Scott Rosen. Be warned it is over 1 hour long.....  http://www.astronomersdoitinthedark.com/dslr_llrgb_tutorial.php

Alan 

[glowingturnip]

Interesting. How do I get PS to split a one-shot image into channels??

into individual R, G and B ?  Don't know for Photoshop I'm afraid - isn't there a channels tab somewhere ?  It's easy in Pixinsight, there's a button for it  ;-)

[Astrosurf]

Thanks guys.

[wimvb]

Also, does anyone have any experience of good tutorials to teach this LLRGB processing?

Have you seen this one? (Or try the links in it for shorter tutorials)

http://www.astronomersdoitinthedark.com/dslr_llrgb_tutorial.php

[Tim99]

Very nice image Alan.  I am just beginning my journey into Post Processing.  (I'm sure you feel my pain!  haha).  Very interesting discussion here.  PhotoShop seems to be the go-to program for this.  Someone suggested I try GIMP since the price is right.  Has anyone used this program and what do you think?

[alan4908]

Hi Tim - thanks for the comment.

I cannot really comment on GIMP since I haven't tried it. 

Basically, I went down the Photoshop route since it is widely used by lots of eminent astrophotographers. I concluded that it must be OK or they wouldn't be using it !  I also like the fact that a comprehensive "library" of astronomical plugin's and actions have been created for Photoshop - some of these are very good at improving image quality (eg take a look at GradientXterminator by Russell Corman (http://www.rc-astro.com/resources/GradientXTerminator/) and Noel Carboni's actions (http://www.prodigitalsoftware.com/Astronomy_Tools_For_Full_Version.html). So, from my perspective I would definitely recommend Photoshop for post processing.

Good luck on your post processing journey...

Alan