A Sunflower after a break

[sulaco]

Here's my first image after a year and a half absence, I've always loved the Sunflower galaxy in wide field but this image would certainly benefit from a lot of extra subs and practice in precessing.

I've had nothing but issues with eqdirect and recently got a new Lynx astro cable to replace Hitec astro one and suddenly my problems were solved.

Any advice and tips for smoothing out the background would be appreciated,

Thanks for looking

Campbell

Scope 130PDS on HEQ5, guided in PHD2, stacked in Nebulosity, levels in PS6

lights: 20 x 300s @ 800 iso

Flats: 20 x 

Bias: 20 x

Darks: 20 x 300s

[Jannis]

It looks pretty good if you ask me.

A way i smooth the background only with a gradually less and less aggressive noise reduction for the brighter parts, is that in PS:
1) I duplicate the layer
2) Copy the whole frame and paste it into a layer mask
3) Invert the layer mask (so that the background is nearly white and the brighter stars nearly black)
4) Click on the duplicated layer again and run a very strong noise reduction (don't be gentle with it like you usually would be, as it will only affect the darker parts of the image)
5) if it affects too much of the brighter parts of the image, or too little of the darker parts, adjust the levels on the layer mask only to adjust how the noise reduction will affect the image.

Now you can just check and uncheck the processed layer for comparison - I find it a lot more easy to see if you've over or underdone the processing that way.

6) If you're happy with it, apply layer mask and merge down.

[sulaco]

Thanks Jannis,

I remember doing something similar once but I usually use an action on PS but I'm not convinced that it's as good as doing it manually. Going to give it another go, I've also downloaded Pixinsight demo.

Thanks

Campbell