Owl Cluster rework

[MrsGnomus]

Following our week at Les Granges it is my turn to attempt to process the data that we gathered. 

Steve (gnomus) suggested that I should start off with the Owl Cluster as he thought it would be easier for a relative beginner.  This is my attempt to copy his/Olly's processing including emulating the "through the eyepiece" view.  When I compared my images with Steve's from last week my stars are much less pronounced that his.  Steve's original can be found here:-

Should I be a bit more aggressive in processing or are my smaller stars okay?  All suggestions welcome......we won't fall out over it....honest!

[nucdoc]

I like the smaller stars, adds elegance to the image

Mark

[gnomus]

4 hours ago, nucdoc said:

I like the smaller stars, adds elegance to the image

Mark

I am leaning that way too.

[wimvb]

From now on your title should be "lady of the stars". You produced a lovely image. I like the smaller stars; there's a very natural look to your image. Can we expect more images from the Les Granges trip with a lady's touch?

[ollypenrice]

I like this one. I think the small stars work better on the close up verion of the EP view but less well on the full widefield where they maybe lack punch.  This is a common processing problem: a single processing of the stars in an image is rarely optimal for presenting both at 100% and when resampled downwards to fill the screen. In general I think that a more aggressive star reduction is needed for the downsampled widefield view in order to let the target nebulae dominate the image. Inevitably such star reduction damages the stars, so letting them stay a little bigger is best when viewing at 100%. I realize that this is at odds with my preference for your small star version in close up, but in your image the stars are the target and this changes the situation.

Background level: in general I try to discourage our guests from cutting back to an overly dark sky but I wonder, certainly in the widefield, if a slight cut back might not give the stars more pop? And while on background sky, this is an absolute beauty in terms of colour and flatness. It's very easy to concentrate on the 'target' when imaging but getting the background sky right is often by far the hardest part of a process. This one is beyond good. It's perfect.

Olly

[MrsGnomus]

7 hours ago, nucdoc said:

I like the smaller stars, adds elegance to the image

 

44 minutes ago, wimvb said:

From now on your title should be "lady of the stars". You produced a lovely image. I like the smaller stars; there's a very natural look to your image. Can we expect more images from the Les Granges trip with a lady's touch?

Thank you both for the encouragement.

I do plan to have a go at reprocessing the images from Les Granges now that we are back home but I will need to entice @gnomusaway from the good computer first as he is busy doing the same thing. I find it impossible to process on the laptop as even small differences in viewing angle radically change how the image looks.

[johnfosteruk]

That's lovely MrsGnomus, beautiful star colours.

[MrsGnomus]

7 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

 

I like this one. I think the small stars work better on the close up verion of the EP view but less well on the full widefield where they maybe lack punch.  This is a common processing problem: a single processing of the stars in an image is rarely optimal for presenting both at 100% and when resampled downwards to fill the screen. In general I think that a more aggressive star reduction is needed for the downsampled widefield view in order to let the target nebulae dominate the image. Inevitably such star reduction damages the stars, so letting them stay a little bigger is best when viewing at 100%. I realize that this is at odds with my preference for your small star version in close up, but in your image the stars are the target and this changes the situation.

Background level: in general I try to discourage our guests from cutting back to an overly dark sky but I wonder, certainly in the widefield, if a slight cut back might not give the stars more pop? And while on background sky, this is an absolute beauty in terms of colour and flatness. It's very easy to concentrate on the 'target' when imaging but getting the background sky right is often by far the hardest part of a process. This one is beyond good. It's perfect.

Olly

 

Thanks Olly, that's exactly the kind of feedback I am after. I will have another go later and post the results if I am brave enough ?

[MrsGnomus]

Following the comments of @ollypenrice I've reprocessed.  Is this any better, or does it need a bit more?

[PatrickGilliland]

I like, maybe the smaller stars could do with a little more punch but the balance of the clusters is good.

Paddy

[MrsGnomus]

Thanks Paddy

I am still very much a beginner with all of this processing business and am trying very consciously to practice "restraint" rather than the (Spinal Tap) one louder approach as so far that has given us the most success with our other images. 

[PatrickGilliland]

2 hours ago, MrsGnomus said:

Thanks Paddy

I am still very much a beginner with all of this processing business and am trying very consciously to practice "restraint" rather than the (Spinal Tap) one louder approach as so far that has given us the most success with our other images. 

Don't look this way for any tips with restrained approach  - for me the key is to evaluate the components of the image and where the eye will be drawn.  In this case the clusters (but could easily be varying degrees of nebulosity, various star sizes, colour elements etc) treat each as a separate entity when evaluating the processing.  So if you reduce cluster intensity by x you may need to only do 0.5x for the smaller stars and possibly then sharpen them a little (that's just a random example).  Restrained is good though, i do admire those that can pull it off.

Paddy

[Barry-Wilson]

I would encourage a little more saturation and brightness with small incremental curve adjustments.  However, we are now entering subjective territory as you have a well-focused and colour balanced image with a flat background sky: there are no evident faults and that is an achievement and demonstrates a good grasp of the basic processing workflow and technique.  The positive feedback above I hope helps your confidence - so well done with this image.

It would be nice to make the gorgeous starfield sparkle just a 'little' more, don't you think?

[MrsGnomus]

 

14 hours ago, Barry-Wilson said:

I would encourage a little more saturation and brightness with small incremental curve adjustments.  However, we are now entering subjective territory as you have a well-focused and colour balanced image with a flat background sky: there are no evident faults and that is an achievement and demonstrates a good grasp of the basic processing workflow and technique.  The positive feedback above I hope helps your confidence - so well done with this image.

It would be nice to make the gorgeous starfield sparkle just a 'little' more, don't you think?

I have had another go this morning aiming for somewhere between my last version and the original as posted by @gnomus.  As ever comments would be helpful.