Tulip - Have I lost my way? You decide......

[swag72]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Maybe time for one of Tom O'Donghue's Golden Rules, which is 'Make Your Own Picture.' This is an interesting idea and one of which I remind myself on occasion.

Olly

A most interesting concept Olly.... and I mean that wholeheartedly. How many of us, myself included as is evident from this thread, actually seek some kind of positive judgement from others? What did it matter if I was losing my way if it was a way that I wanted to go...... Just because it's different to what I normally do then why should I ask for any kind of agreement or otherwise. Would it make us better imagers if we just did what we wanted? For example, people have said and I know it as well, that I have developed a 'style' with my images....... To that end, I maintain that to the nth degree. Perhaps this is stifling change, improvement and development.

@PhotoGav - This has certainly given me food for thought, especially Olly's comment above.

[peter shah]

I quite like this one Sara the mix of natural star colour with the narrow band. I find narrow band stars distracting in themselves quite often giving the pink or magenta star then with other techniques of removing the star colour altogether I find better but still rather a redundant feel to them. The natural star colour I find gives the image another boost of colour. The question then one might ask is do narrow band false colour images need more colour...its open to question...I myself don't find them offensive and IMO gives something else to look at. Nice and rice colour. some have said slightly soft, I side with a sharper image.

Thumbs up from me

[steppenwolf]

Quote

'Make Your Own Picture.'

Yup, I agree with this completely.

[swag72]

@peter shah - These are narrowband stars! No RGB photons were destroyed in the making of this image  

 

[peter shah]

1 hour ago, swag72 said:

@peter shah - These are narrowband stars! No RGB photons were destroyed in the making of this image  

 

I take it all back. They do have an RGB look to them...fooled me..i like it even more now

[Tim]

I once did some experimenting with RGB stars v narrowband. IIRC, especially with bi-colour images it is possible to achieve the "correct" colour for the stars, inasmuch as they are either Blue, white or gold. Can't recall exactly what I did with this, it's been so long since I've captured any useful data to play with I'll forget which end of my scopes to use soon :/

I prefer your usual style Sara, the softness in this one is not achieved in the same way as Rob's, and the effect is not pleasing, Robs image has an other-wordly ethereal look but this rendition just looks like conditions were poor or focus was a micron or two soft. Sorry!

Let's see it processed in your usual way

 

 

[swag72]

@steppenwolf - I don't disagree with you there Steve, but it seems that we can easily get stuck in a rut trying to produce images that others will like

Thanks Tim ....... Not sure if the 'other version' will get a posting for a while! It's got to be tweak free for a while yet and it's not even managed a few hours yet

[ollypenrice]

I think that an artist who is entirely contemptuous of their audience risks gravitating towards the production of self-indulgent rubbish. But an artist who is entirely in their audience's pocket will be frightened to say anything that the audience doesn't already know. Good art is produced by artists who negotiate wisely between the two poles. Personally I like to feel I have an audience looking over my shoulder because this imaginary presence serves as my objective critic.

I think it is far more important and instructive to look at the data and the image in front of you than at other imagers' work. When I'm doing a processing job with beginners they will often ask, 'What will you do next?' My answer is always the same: 'Look at the picture.'  It is the picture which will tell you what it needs and what more it can give. It's quite like answering a question in an English Lit exam. The answer is there in the question but you need to learn how to look at the question properly for this to work.

We'll all be writing in The British Journal of Aesthetics next!

lly

[Gina]

Very wise words there Olly

[Stub Mandrel]

It's interesting, I recently quoted one of the FAQs on the Pixinsight website elsewhere:

" For painting, drawing and arbitrary retouching, a layers tool is probably the best option. In such case, however, you should ask yourself if trying to do astrophotography that way is really worth the effort. "

OK, that's in the context of 'pausing layers to pain in detail but, aside from making an arbitrary judgement about which methods of image manipulation are valid or invalid, it seems to deny that there can be a legitimate aesthetic element to astrophotography - something which would confuse any photographer of earth-bound subjects!

Quite to the contrary perhaps we should a thread to exhibit astro images that are driven by an aesthetic intent rather than a representational one?

[swag72]

15 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

It's interesting, I recently quoted one of the FAQs on the Pixinsight website elsewhere:

" For painting, drawing and arbitrary retouching, a layers tool is probably the best option. In such case, however, you should ask yourself if trying to do astrophotography that way is really worth the effort. "......

I'm sorry, but what a load of pretentious old tosh........ So anyone who uses layers produces images that aren't even worth the effort according to Pixinsight? *Rolls eyes* 

[johnrt]

The Pixinsight team really make it hard to like them when they come up with this type of drivel on a regular basis. Reminds me on the passage Rodd posted from them in one of his recent threads.

The whole point is that using layers / brushes etc is LESS effort and gives you MORE control than a bunch of algebraic formula and sliders with incomprehensible names, the results of which are anyone's guess until you try them!

 

[Gina]

It certainly puts me off trying PixInsight, I have to say.

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

" For painting, drawing and arbitrary retouching, a layers tool is probably the best option. In such case, however, you should ask yourself if trying to do astrophotography that way is really worth the effort. "

 

Pure tosh. Let's think about this. Nobody wants to process the whole of an image in the same way. We want to be able to apply one set of processing tools to one part of the image and a quite different set of tools to another. NR in the background and sharpening in the strong signal would be an obvious set of opposites. So how do we select our respective zones?

- PI would have us make masks. Will these masks be in exactly the right place? Try it and see. Fail, modify the mask, try again and fail again. This strikes me as slightly Neanderthal....

- Ps allows us to make a copy layer, carry out the modification on the whole of that layer, and then select where and by how much we allow the modification through while seeing the result in real time. I would call this the homo sapiens method...

Why PI considers itself to be truer to the data than Ps I don't know. If you want to be true to the data don't process it a all. In reality both programmes do quite similar things to the data. The big difference is in the methods by which the imager chooses where to make the changes.

Anyway, what's this?

It's a flat processed in Pixinsight.

lly

[Rodd]

5 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Pure tosh. Let's think about this. Nobody wants to process the whole of an image in the same way. We want to be able to apply one set of processing tools to one part of the image and a quite different set of tools to another. NR in the background and sharpening in the strong signal would be an obvious set of opposites. So how do we select our respective zones?

- PI would have us make masks. Will these masks be in exactly the right place? Try it and see. Fail, modify the mask, try again and fail again. This strikes me as slightly Neanderthal....

- Ps allows us to make a copy layer, carry out the modification on the whole of that layer, and then select where and by how much we allow the modification through while seeing the result in real time. I would call this the homo sapiens method...

Why PI considers itself to be truer to the data than Ps I don't know. If you want to be true to the data don't process it a all. In reality both programmes do quite similar things to the data. The big difference is in the methods by which the imager chooses where to make the changes.

Anyway, what's this?

It's a flat processed in Pixinsight.

lly

Great comparison--a couple of thoughts.  In PI, with an expert processor (Vicent Perez for example--a professional), the masks are amazingly tight--they cover exactly what you want them to, whether it is a range of tone, color, or objects like stars, nebula, galaxies, or just the Ha regions, or star halos, etc.  But it is not easy--like spinning a basketball on 1 finger.  And PI does have "active previews" where you can see changes in real time (takes a few seconds for the computer to make the change--but its only a preview).  

PI folks feel that with PS, many people change the data in a way that is "artificial"  like removing a mole on a persons lip for a magazine picture.  Or, changing the color of a nebula by adding data that is not there as apposed to modifying data that is there.  I don't know enough about PI, and nothing about PS--so I don't know if both do the exact same things or not.  But I have been drawn and quartered by both sides and am familiar with some of the opinions (whether real or perceived I know not).  I do know I hate the XISF native PI file format--it screams isolationism.  I have been told that the platforms compliment one another, and both together is the best of both worlds.  I see no reason to think this faulty reasoning (as long  a PI can still work with Tiff--which it cane--albeit with irritating warning messages that "the TIFF format (or even the fITs format) can't handle the truth!! aka Colonel Jessup).

Rodd

[Stub Mandrel]

I must admit I have a great inbuilt distrust of anything that claims to be 'the one true way'.

I am left wondering what PI users do about dust bunnies that a quick dab of the clone tool would eliminate in PS? Or do PI users live in a world of perfect data?

In all honesty though, I am not yet skilled enough to separate my stars from my nebulae I am still in awe of the fact that the sky is full of invisible detail and somehow I am able to open a window on it.

 

[ollypenrice]

Did you ever meet a fundamentalist you liked?

Lots of Ps imagers like me make a consdierable use fo PI and state clearly that they would struggle to do without it. But as for 'the one true path,' get outta here! 

Here's a question. There is, without doubt, a 'Pixinsight Look.' (Images have a 'shrivelled' look. Dennis - the much missed Roundycat on here - compared it with the look of a human brain, hence my satyrical moment above.)  Now this is not inevitable because we don't see it in the tasteful imaging of Barry Wilson, for instance. But everyone knows what it is. Now, is there a 'Photoshop look?' If there is, it has escaped me. People (myself included) make all sorts of bad calls in Ps but they are OUR bad calls, they are not the corporate bad calls of the one true faith. More shrivel equals more detail. It does not!!

Olly

[Stub Mandrel]

2 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

satyrical

:-)

[MrsGnomus]

3 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Did you ever meet a fundamentalist you liked?

.....

Oh I don't know.  We can think of at least one R&P fundamentalist to whom we are quite partial.

[ollypenrice]

13 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

:-)

Heheh, a quick Google puts me in the 16% of spelling errors with that one. I think I'm going native! Monique and I are in danger of degenerating into a private language, part French and part English, in which we don't like to correct each other because we like our respective errors...

Any excuse!

Olly

[gnomus]

1 hour ago, Rodd said:

Great comparison--a couple of thoughts.  In PI, with an expert processor (Vicent Perez for example--a professional), the masks are amazingly tight--they cover exactly what you want them to.....

I must say that I struggle to see what the difference is in creating a mask in PI then runnng one of their adjustments, and making an adjustment in PS and masking out the areas where one does or doesn't want that adjustment applied.  

Let us concern ourselves with more serious matters - should one open a boiled egg at the pointy end or the fat end?

[Stub Mandrel]

15 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Heheh, a quick Google puts me in the 16% of spelling errors with that one. I think I'm going native! Monique and I are in danger of degenerating into a private language, part French and part English, in which we don't like to correct each other because we like our respective errors...

Any excuse!

Olly

I thought it was deliberate!

[Stub Mandrel]

2 minutes ago, gnomus said:

I must say that I struggle to see what the difference is in creating a mask in PI then runnng one of their adjustments, and making an adjustment in PS and masking out the areas where one does or doesn't want that adjustment applied.  

Let us concern ourselves with more serious matters - should one open a boiled egg at the pointy end or the fat end?

I think they are conflating 'manual retouching' in PS with the use of layers; I have no idea why they might wish to do this, especially as they have already played with layers in PI.

I had better shut up - although I don't like the attitude to customers implied by the PI 'marketing speak' or product positioning based on denigrating the competition, I have no knowledge of the merits and demerits of the product itself.

[ollypenrice]

4 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

I thought it was deliberate!

Nope, a mistake. It seems right with a 'y' though. I may well be losing it.

 

[ollypenrice]

7 minutes ago, gnomus said:

I must say that I struggle to see what the difference is in creating a mask in PI then runnng one of their adjustments, and making an adjustment in PS and masking out the areas where one does or doesn't want that adjustment applied.  

Let us concern ourselves with more serious matters - should one open a boiled egg at the pointy end or the fat end?

One should start at the pointy end. Clearly the fat end has been the mount's predominant location and guiding errors (I suspect backlash!) have occasionally moved it a little on one axis to create the pointy end.

Anyway I am stopping there or you'll have me sectioned.

Anon.