An unsatisfacry NGC1333...

[ollypenrice]

Rodd's NGC1333 told me what was wrong with my version and Mark's recent, and excellent, effort confirmed it.

I feel this reprocess is OK, though only just, on noise and I like the colour and resolution of the bright nebula well enough. It's the outlying dust that I simply cannot get right. Mark and Rodd's images present it as tenuous clouds of dust backlit by starlight. In mine the dust looks like potter's clay, solid and lit from in front. I'm stumped. The problem may lie in my colour layer because I found very little distinction between the blacker background sky and the browner dust. I had to put a crowbar between these colours to separate them even as much as you see here. That separation is minimal in the data.

This was old Atik 4000/Tak Baby Q data for the widefield and Yves' ODK14 for the bright nebula.

Olly

 

[Davey-T]

Can't be any help as my version didn't even get to see the light of day.

What struck me about Rodds version was the jewel like stars illuminating the image, contrary to the "usual" practice of making them as small and insignificant as possible.

Dave

[gnomus]

You see Olly - if only you would use PixInsight .............

[Having lit blue touch paper, now retreats to a safe place .....]

 

[ollypenrice]

9 minutes ago, gnomus said:

You see Olly - if only you would use PixInsight .............

[Having lit blue touch paper, now retreats to a safe place .....]

 

I have to say that this heretical thought had occurred to me. I did use ABE and Dark Structures Enhance - as a layer in civilzation Photoshop of course...

lly

[gnomus]

On a serious note - this is great.  Excuse me whilst I go off on a tangent.  I listen to a lot of music, and have a fairly extensive collection.  In the not too distant past, there was a trend that involved overuse the technique of "compression" when mastering recordings.  This boosts the 'quiet bits' and dampens down the 'loud bits'.  (You will know if you try listening to orchestral music in the car that sometimes you can't hear the quiet bits, because they are overwhelmed by road and engine noises.)  However, this technique tended to spoil things for people who (like me) enjoy the full dynamic range of music.  It results in a sound that is very 'tiring' to listen to.  People use the terms "brickwalling" and "loudness wars" to describe the effect. (You can Google Bing those terms if you are interested.)  Part of what makes music interesting is its dynamics.

Now I was going to try to draw a parallel between dynamism in music and astrophotography - how faint dust clouds are 'faint', and about the importance of subtlety, but I am an illiterate buffoon, and I would probably only end up mangling my worms.....    

[ollypenrice]

2 minutes ago, gnomus said:

On a serious note - this is great.  Excuse me whilst I go off on a tangent.  I listen to a lot of music, and have a fairly extensive collection.  In the not too distant past, there was a trend that involved overuse the technique of "compression" when mastering recordings.  This boosts the 'quiet bits' and dampens down the 'loud bits'.  (You will know if you try listening to orchestral music in the car that sometimes you can't hear the quiet bits, because they are overwhelmed by road and engine noises.)  However, this technique tended to spoil things for people who (like me) enjoy the full dynamic range of music.  It results in a sound that is very 'tiring' to listen to.  People use the terms "brickwalling" and "loudness wars" to describe the effect. (You can Google Bing those terms if you are interested.)  Part of what makes music interesting is its dynamics.

Now I was going to try to draw a parallel between dynamism in music and astrophotography - how faint dust clouds are 'faint', and about the importance of subtlety, but I am an illiterate buffoon, and I would probably only end up mangling my worms.....    

Since I drive a Duster and a Mazda MX5 even the loud bits get drowned out by engine noise... 

When we perform an aggressive stretch in AP we do boost the faint signal but we also increase the separation between grades of faintness, so I'm not sure how this translates...

Olly

[PatrickGilliland]

Hi Olly

It's a great image either way but i see what you mean, the core is superb and the dust is a little flat.  As mentioned some PI would help here but lacking that have you tried some colour selection layers (as lightness layers) with some careful selection of the areas (and a inverted copy) you can give some push/pull type adjustments between the layers.  The adjustments can be both in lightness it self but you could also run saturation/colour adjustments to.

Hope that helps though suspect you may have already tried.

Paddy

[gnomus]

2 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I have to say that this heretical thought had occurred to me. I did use ABE and Dark Structures Enhance - as a layer in civilzation Photoshop of course...

lly

And on another serious note - I do wonder about bit-depth.  In PI the stacked image remains at 32-bit, until I change it to a TIFF and head for PS.  I don't think one could tell the difference between a 32-bit, 16-bit or even 8-bit image once it is in its final form (we are back to 'hi-res audio', CDs and MP3s).   But I do wonder if, when we are trying to pull stuff out of the left hand end of the histogram, we lose something when we stretch at 16-bit compared with 32-bit.  I have done some NB imaging recently and that took a fair stretch to get something visible on screen.  Did I get a 'smoother' result - by which I mean on the final stretched curve - working in 32-bit that I did when I tried it in 16-bit PS?  I thought that I did.  But, I am hampered by my lack of knowledge and technique, so it could be that my 16-bit stretch was just too clumsy.  I am hoping to ask you about this quite soon!     

[gnomus]

4 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

 

When we perform an aggressive stretch in AP we do boost the faint signal but we also increase the separation between grades of faintness, so I'm not sure how this translates...

If a passage of music is marked "quiet", yet when you listen to it, the recording engineer has made it "loud", then it jars and is out of place.  If a cloud of faint dust is thrust down your throat by an overenthusiastic processing job, then it also jars.  Can you imagine if Rembrandt's paintings had had the 'Shadow/Highlight tool' applied to them, so that all of the chiaroscuro was lost?  Not that I'm comparing you to Rembrandt .....  well .....   You must excuse me, the medication hasn't kicked in yet. 

[wimvb]

1 hour ago, gnomus said:

On a serious note - this is great.  Excuse me whilst I go off on a tangent.  I listen to a lot of music, and have a fairly extensive collection.  In the not too distant past, there was a trend that involved overuse the technique of "compression" when mastering recordings.  This boosts the 'quiet bits' and dampens down the 'loud bits'.  (You will know if you try listening to orchestral music in the car that sometimes you can't hear the quiet bits, because they are overwhelmed by road and engine noises.)  However, this technique tended to spoil things for people who (like me) enjoy the full dynamic range of music.  It results in a sound that is very 'tiring' to listen to.  People use the terms "brickwalling" and "loudness wars" to describe the effect. (You can Google Bing those terms if you are interested.)  Part of what makes music interesting is its dynamics.

Now I was going to try to draw a parallel between dynamism in music and astrophotography - how faint dust clouds are 'faint', and about the importance of subtlety, but I am an illiterate buffoon, and I would probably only end up mangling my worms.....    

The PI equivalent would be HDRmultiscaletransform, I believe. It was used (imo overused) in pixinsights example process/ tutorial of the iris nebula ngc 7023.

https://pixinsight.com/tutorials/NGC7023-HDR/index.html

The tool is the ap equivalent of a powertool. Used with caution it can give beautiful results. But it's easy to overdo it.

As for bit depth in PI, have a look at this link. It nay have some relevance.

https://pixinsight.com/tutorials/24-bit-stf/index.html

[simmo39]

Wow, v deep, just luv it.

[StargeezerTim]

The only unsatisfactory thing about this is your spelling of 'unsatisfactory'! 

95% for content but 10% for presentashion... 

[ollypenrice]

45 minutes ago, StargeezerTim said:

The only unsatisfactory thing about this is your spelling of 'unsatisfactory'! 

95% for content but 10% for presentashion... 

I know, but you can't edit tites!

 

2 hours ago, gnomus said:

If a passage of music is marked "quiet", yet when you listen to it, the recording engineer has made it "loud", then it jars and is out of place.  If a cloud of faint dust is thrust down your throat by an overenthusiastic processing job, then it also jars.  Can you imagine if Rembrandt's paintings had had the 'Shadow/Highlight tool' applied to them, so that all of the chiaroscuro was lost?  Not that I'm comparing you to Rembrandt .....  well .....   You must excuse me, the medication hasn't kicked in yet. 

I wouldn't dream of messing with Rembrandt's dynamic range! It is one his areas of mastery, as in Man in the Golden Helmet. But, unlike Rembrandt, we start with the linear histogram given to us and then we try to make it fill the full range of our screens. We do have a choice, though, between really hauling out the faintest stuff beyond all proportion or keeping a sense of proportion in a stretch. I think both are OK though, maybe, an accompanying word of explanation can be good. I did say that the outer glow of M31 was my objective, for instance, when I did my last version. It is certainly out of proprtion.

It just occurred to me that the linear histogram devotes most of its dynamic range to the space between the outer edges of our stars and their cores. I'd never thought of it in those terms before! 

Paddy, thanks for your suggestions, which I haven't tried, and will need to read up on. I have ordered Warren's PI book though.

Olly

[PatrickGilliland]

5 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

 

Paddy, thanks for your suggestions, which I haven't tried, and will need to read up on. I have ordered Warren's PI book though.

Olly

Crossing to the dark side careful - if you need a hand let me know in PI always happy to share what i know (won't take long!  )

I understand there are some pre-defined process icon sets you can download as well from the publisher to support the book they may provide a good head start.  I have my set if you want a copy of that.  Would need to be tweaked to you gear but the process is divided up into calibration, linear and stretched screen each with the typical processes you would run for each.

Let me know if you would like a copy

 

Paddy

[Ben the Ignorant]

It's off-topic but you have the same kind of absent-mindedness that I have: you forgot a syllable in the title, sometimes I forget a complete word. I guess it is a sin of people who get ahead of themselves because they want to go too fast.

[Rodd]

Olly, can't say much beyond what's been said.  I think your image is great.  All you need is a bit more definition in your dust.  The image is clean, and I would think that would make it easy to supplement with additional data.

[Rodd]

3 hours ago, gnomus said:

And on another serious note - I do wonder about bit-depth.  In PI the stacked image remains at 32-bit, until I change it to a TIFF and head for PS.  I don't think one could tell the difference between a 32-bit, 16-bit or even 8-bit image once it is in its final form (we are back to 'hi-res audio', CDs and MP3s).   But I do wonder if, when we are trying to pull stuff out of the left hand end of the histogram, we lose something when we stretch at 16-bit compared with 32-bit.  I have done some NB imaging recently and that took a fair stretch to get something visible on screen.  Did I get a 'smoother' result - by which I mean on the final stretched curve - working in 32-bit that I did when I tried it in 16-bit PS?  I thought that I did.  But, I am hampered by my lack of knowledge and technique, so it could be that my 16-bit stretch was just too clumsy.  I am hoping to ask you about this quite soon!     

In PI you can even go to 64 bit if you want....don't know if it makes a difference, much like 32 vs 16, but just saying.

[Rodd]

3 hours ago, gnomus said:

On a serious note - this is great.  Excuse me whilst I go off on a tangent.  I listen to a lot of music, and have a fairly extensive collection.  In the not too distant past, there was a trend that involved overuse the technique of "compression" when mastering recordings.  This boosts the 'quiet bits' and dampens down the 'loud bits'.  (You will know if you try listening to orchestral music in the car that sometimes you can't hear the quiet bits, because they are overwhelmed by road and engine noises.)  However, this technique tended to spoil things for people who (like me) enjoy the full dynamic range of music.  It results in a sound that is very 'tiring' to listen to.  People use the terms "brickwalling" and "loudness wars" to describe the effect. (You can Google Bing those terms if you are interested.)  Part of what makes music interesting is its dynamics.

Now I was going to try to draw a parallel between dynamism in music and astrophotography - how faint dust clouds are 'faint', and about the importance of subtlety, but I am an illiterate buffoon, and I would probably only end up mangling my worms.....    

True...true...true...yes, the CD, MPI etc music of today is tinny and hard on the brain.  Digital is not necessarily better in acoustical endeavors (and I mean music of all types, acoustic, electric etc).  That's why live performances are so much more satisfying, and that's why analog recordings of live performances are better than digital mass produced music.  The other aspect of digital that I hate is CDs are so darn fragile compared to tapes--which are fully protected from scratches except for 1 inch.  Sorry--back to AP!!!!!

[Rush]

Huh! Olly throws a bone in rest start to chew ?

Hi Olly, long time hope everything is fine out there in Les Granges.

Still nice weather ? I played The Who and ACDC driving back from your place no Dylan:)

Is this some kind of processing Skill test ? U never know .

Great image, As usuall  another Olly masterpiece. Well, this crop is too glassy and dark on the left side , Crisp and sterile all in all.

Apart from the reddish muddy hue.

God these softwares make deepspace crystal clear, All those dust and cosmic debris layered away, sniff....... sniff......

OLLy, Is there an uncropped version of the Baby Q and ODK 14 image ? Just to see the initial state , if you dont mind.

I do have a similar problem with P116 with comapritively less fotons than your image.But was processed in PI , and was wondering why i could`nt remove this red hue.

Best regards

Rush

[ollypenrice]

46 minutes ago, Rush said:

Huh! Olly throws a bone in rest start to chew ?

Hi Olly, long time hope everything is fine out there in Les Granges.

Still nice weather ? I played The Who and ACDC driving back from your place no Dylan:)

Is this some kind of processing Skill test ? U never know .

Great image, As usuall  another Olly masterpiece. Well, this crop is too glassy and dark on the left side , Crisp and sterile all in all.

Apart from the reddish muddy hue.

God these softwares make deepspace crystal clear, All those dust and cosmic debris layered away, sniff....... sniff......

OLLy, Is there an uncropped version of the Baby Q and ODK 14 image ? Just to see the initial state , if you dont mind.

I do have a similar problem with P116 with comapritively less fotons than your image.But was processed in PI , and was wondering why i could`nt remove this red hue.

Best regards

Rush

Hi Rush, bone + chew = forum!

I've just started the upload of the four calibrated, registered and cropped linear LRGB files into Dropbox. Out here in the sticks it might be a while but I'll put the link on here so others can have a play. The L was24x15 and the RGB 12X10 each. Alas I can't remember what the sky was like but I've a feeling Maurice Toet did this target the same week.

Dylan's prize will be controversial but I'm heartily in favour... Many English lit students of my generation are great admirers.

Ill be back when the upload is done.

Olly

 

[Rush]

Well,
Brining it all back home, Blood on the tracks great albums. In our hostel there were so many Tambourine Man' sssssssss

Like Dead Heads (Greatful Dead freaks), These were Dylan Heads

Back to AP,  Thats fine If you upload, take ur time.

Cheers

Rush.

[ollypenrice]

Here are the files. Please feel free.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7xdgm7tdp3b79ak/BLUE 1333_reg_cp.tif?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/thlsp8yoqlgovjp/GREEN 1333_reg_cp.tif?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gy49ofzj2daemhf/RED 1333_reg_cp.tif?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1470o2c1674t84l/LUM 1333_reg_cp.tif?dl=0

Olly

[gnomus]

I tried downloading those files Olly but got error messages.   Could be a problem my end - I'll have another go later. 

[wimvb]

1 minute ago, gnomus said:

I tried downloading those files Olly but got error messages.   Could be a problem my end - I'll have another go later. 

Me too

[ollypenrice]

3 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Me too

Sorry folks. Don't know what's going on there. If anyone wanting them would like to PM me a regular email address I'll try to send them by that means.

Olly