M81 & M82 - My first go at these

[Starwiz]

7 x 700s plus 22 x 900s taken over 3 nights.  Stacked in DSS, processed in PS.

John

 

[gnomus]

Very nice John.   Round stars, good detail, and not overprocessed.  I wonder if there is a slight red/orange cast that could be eliminated...

[bottletopburly]

Nice work

[Steve 1962]

Very nice John. I love the Ha regions showing up so well.

I agree with the comment about the reddish cast..and to my eyes, the background could be lighter and less "clipped" - there's loads of good stuff behind these two and, if you've managed to capture it, it's worth showing!

Steve

[Starwiz]

1 hour ago, gnomus said:

Very nice John.   Round stars, good detail, and not overprocessed.  I wonder if there is a slight red/orange cast that could be eliminated...

Yes, I think you're right.  I'll have another go when I get time.  

John

[dannybgoode]

Very pleasing image. What scope / mount etc do you use?

[simmo39]

V nice!

[barkis]

You can give yourself a Pat On the Back for this John. Look fantastic, Like the 
Starburst Galaxy M82.  Maybe a little colourful, but who's to say what is right for these 
distant objects. you do damned well to get them resolved, so I won't worry too much
about colour. I'm happy with Mono anyway.  
Others differ in their Ideas, which is fine too.

[Starwiz]

3 hours ago, dannybgoode said:

Very pleasing image. What scope / mount etc do you use?

SW200p with NEQ6.  Canon 1200d modified, CLS filter.

John

[Starwiz]

2 hours ago, barkis said:

You can give yourself a Pat On the Back for this John. Look fantastic, Like the 
Starburst Galaxy M82.  Maybe a little colourful, but who's to say what is right for these 
distant objects. you do damned well to get them resolved, so I won't worry too much
about colour. I'm happy with Mono anyway.  
Others differ in their Ideas, which is fine too.

Thanks barkis.  

John

[wimvb]

Great image. You even managed to capture Holmberg IX, just below M81.

Thanks for sharing

[Starwiz]

22 hours ago, wimvb said:

Great image. You even managed to capture Holmberg IX, just below M81.

Thanks for sharing

Thanks Wim.

I had to google that one.  I was wondering what that faint smudge was when I was doing the processing 

John

[bendiddley]

Amazing image. An inspiration for the likes of me who is just starting out. Would love to get an image like that, well done!

[Starwiz]

3 hours ago, bendiddley said:

Amazing image. An inspiration for the likes of me who is just starting out. Would love to get an image like that, well done!

Thanks ben.

I'm still in my first year of deep sky imaging, so I'm glad it's helping with the inspiration.  It looks like you have most of the kit you need so I'm sure you'll be achieving the same and better before very long. 

John

[brantuk]

Very nice first attempt John - clear spiral detail in Bode's, and the Cigar is hard to get detail at the same time - so you done well there!

[Starwiz]

2 minutes ago, brantuk said:

Very nice first attempt John - clear spiral detail in Bode's, and the Cigar is hard to get detail at the same time - so you done well there!

Thanks brantuk.

[Randalloverby]

This was one of the first targets I looked at when I purchased my telescope, great capture.

[Starwiz]

On 1/22/2017 at 18:06, gnomus said:

Very nice John.   Round stars, good detail, and not overprocessed.  I wonder if there is a slight red/orange cast that could be eliminated...

 

On 1/22/2017 at 19:04, Steve 1962 said:

Very nice John. I love the Ha regions showing up so well.

I agree with the comment about the reddish cast..and to my eyes, the background could be lighter and less "clipped" - there's loads of good stuff behind these two and, if you've managed to capture it, it's worth showing!

Steve

Here's the version with less colour and hopefully less clipped after reprocessing.

John

 

[gnomus]

I think that is a great improvement.  For me the blacks could be taken in a tad more.  And maybe a little bit of saturation.

[wimvb]

43 minutes ago, gnomus said:

I think that is a great improvement.  For me the blacks could be taken in a tad more.  And maybe a little bit of saturation.

I agree. The improvement is great, but there's a lot more colour hiding in the data. The original image, while having a colour cast, shows this.

Here's what I pulled out of the reworked image. Having only a jpeg to go on, it soon becomes ugly. With a tiff or fits and proper masking, you'd be able to get much better results.

colour neutralisation of the background

Luminance extraction

flattening of the rgb image and multiple passes of Saturation enhancement in CurvesTransformation

LRGB combination

 

Cheers,

[Stormbringer]

24 minutes ago, wimvb said:

I agree. The improvement is great, but there's a lot more colour hiding in the data. The original image, while having a colour cast, shows this.

Here's what I pulled out of the reworked image. Having only a jpeg to go on, it soon becomes ugly. With a tiff or fits and proper masking, you'd be able to get much better results.

colour neutralisation of the background

Luminance extraction

flattening of the rgb image and multiple passes of Saturation enhancement in CurvesTransformation

LRGB combination

 

Cheers,

thats nice 

[Starwiz]

23 minutes ago, wimvb said:

I agree. The improvement is great, but there's a lot more colour hiding in the data. The original image, while having a colour cast, shows this.

Here's what I pulled out of the reworked image. Having only a jpeg to go on, it soon becomes ugly. With a tiff or fits and proper masking, you'd be able to get much better results.

colour neutralisation of the background

Luminance extraction

flattening of the rgb image and multiple passes of Saturation enhancement in CurvesTransformation

LRGB combination

 

Cheers,

Wow, I have to say I'm impressed!

Do you know of any tutorials that would show me how to do all that stuff?

Thanks

John

[wimvb]

Harry Page's and Kayron Merciecas tutorials on PixInsight. These are excellent tutorials that can show you basic processing.

[Starwiz]

Thanks Wim, although I haven't got PI, so wonder if it's possible to do the same type of stuff in PS?  

John

[wimvb]

I'm convinced that it is possible. The basic procedure, independent of software, is as follows:

You create a b/w copy of your colour image, and process this the usual way (stretching, noise reduction, sharpening, etc). You blur the colour image and increase saturation very agressively. Then you combine the b/w image with the colour image.

I have no experience with photoshop, but probably by blending the b/w image as a layer, using lighten as blending mode. There must be quite a number of  photoshop tutorials out there that show the procedure. Just google "lrgb combination photoshop"

Hope this helps