How do you do colour your solar images?

[Drop Of Sun]

Hi everyone,

How do you colour your solar images? White light, h-alpha, CaK and whatever else you do! Or do you capture in colour?

I've not done much solar processing since the heady days of summer, and I felt a bit overwhelmed coming back to it   I felt lost so tried to nail down an easier way for me to do colour, which seems to be using Gradient Map in Photoshop (Image > Adjustments menu).

I hope your ways might also give new imagers some ideas to try!

Here's the Gradient Map I tried (worked fast for me, then I did some tweaks):

I think for wider shots I might need to first flatten the image a bit for the gradient map to do the colour consitent across the image. The cropped image is from July with Equinox 120, Quark, Grasshopper 3.

Thanks for looking!

[Montana]

The easiest way is to go to Adjustments - variations and play to your hearts content. However your image first needs to be 8bit. Must admit, I've not seen the gradient map before

Alexandra

[Pete Presland]

Me neither, but it looks to have done a decent job!

[Drop Of Sun]

I don't think I'd used Gradient Map before either! Hadn't really noticed it in there before!

Alexandra, easiest sounds good I can't seem to find Variations in my version of Photoshop    Are you using CC?

Only early days but Gradient Map looks quick and handy to me so far for adjusting tones in mono mode as well.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

My recipe can be found in the pinned thread near the top of the solar imaging section. I use the "curves"option in GIMP. Which is similar to your gradient map, it seems

[philj]

Combination of curves, levels and colour balance

[David Smith]

Combination of curves, levels and colour balance

I use GIMP as I don't like windoze   so levels, curves and colour balance are what I use.

[Steve Ward]

GIMP for me too being a tightwad ... 

On the rare occasions that I add a little colour to my whitelights I use Colors - Colorify , starting with Yellow as a base for a 'Custom Colour' then dropping the Green element until I'm happy .

This puts a uniform colour wash to the disc that has been adjusted for Levels and Contrast without all those annoying contrast issues that using Colourize or adjusting the Hue , Saturation and Colour Balance can introduce and that are a pain to eradicate after colouring in .

To be honest though I prefer my 'whitelights' in Mono and Inverted and just do the orangey ones for the benefit of others ...   

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I tend not to use colour balance at all, just curves. I find that more reproducible (especially because you can save settings)

[Ibbo!]

I use curves now

and I have it saved

[Rob63]

Photoshop Curves for me as its nice and easy to adjust R, G, B separately.

Saved as an action then I can tweak it if needed.

[Montana]

I'm using Photoshop CS5 but it can also be found in the Elements version, under the 'Image' menu tab - Adjustments - Variations.

Alexandra