My First Ever Deep Sky Image - Why No Colour?

[PembrokeSteve]

Hi,

Finally got to use my NEQ6PRO Mount with my Orion ED80 Refractor and Canon 450D on Tuesday 13th February. I have been waiting patiently for this night since the middle of October 17, when i got my new NEQ6 mount. Since then the weather has been foul, and on certain evenings when it was momentarily clear, there were off-putting high winds. If it was not high winds we had constant "short notice" hail and rain showers. I did not dare try to set up my new mount, until a calm clear evening appeared. Anyway my lousy West Wales weather finally gave me the break i needed and i put my new set up into action.
After all this time had had virtually forgotten what to do, but i did my polar alignment o.k and got my ED80 locked onto M42 in Orion, and took some basic 30 sec subs at 800ASA.
Just to see how things worked i shot 7 lights and 4 darks at 30 secs each.
I was pleased to see the images that i had just took, were coming up sharp and in colour on my Canon 450D preview screen, which was encouraging.
Anyway i afterwards previewed my M42 images on my Canon 450D camera and a programme called UF Raw, and the individual 30 sec images all showed plenty of colour.
However after stacking them via Deep Sky Stacker - the final stacked image came out in black and white (devoid of the colours showing before stacking).
After going through some post image processing using GIMP (i actually used some guidance from the excellent book "Making Every Photon Count" which refers to GIMP) , i failed to bring any colour into my final image.
Is this because i did not take enough subs?
Next time i intend to shoot loads more subs and for a longer duration - by doing this, will i then get a final stacked image showing some colour? Something that i can work on to get the colour image i want?
Any advice much appreciated,
Regards,
Steve 

See my photo below, result after stacking, with no processing applied, what happened to the colours?

 

m42_13feb18CROP.Tiff

[vlaiv]

The colour is there but it is subtle

A quick touch up in Gimp helps bring out fainter details (I did blow out the core of nebula, but I was working on 8bit data, you should be able to do better than that).

While colour is there, it might be good to check DSS settings. There is one setting that specifies how to deal with equalization of frames (sorry I can't remember what it is, and DSS won't show options without any subs loaded, let me see if I can find it online), yes here it is: background calibration, there are three modes to choose from, and for one of the modes it says in recommended settings that it can lead to "washed out colors" - so please see what setting you have been using and try to change it and see if it helps a bit with initial saturation - but you will need to boost it a bit in post processing anyway.

 

HTH

 

[wxsatuser]

You will always see good colour in camera as it's processed the RAW and your seeing the finished jpg.

When we stack it's our job to do what the camera has done, we do this via our software, DSS, Pixinsight and whatever
photo software we are using.

 

[PembrokeSteve]

Hi

Many thanks to Vlaive and wxsatuser for your help and advice. As Vlaive suggested i will now check out my DSS settings.
I have much to learn.
All these cloudy evenings in Wales will come in handy for me to improve upon my processing ability. 
Thanks again,
Steve

[bobro]

If saturation is adjusted in DSS it will bring out colour in the output file. Something around 18-20% normally works well.

I too use DSS followed by GIMP for processing and find it useful to also adjust the colour balance in DSS by aligning the RGB peaks. 

Hope this helps.

 

[catburglar]

I too do exactly as bobro  suggested in DSS before saving the file - remember to tick the box to apply the settings rather than embed the settings in the save as dialog box.

You should then have reasonable colours when you open the file in Gimp

[spillage]

I would disagree in making any changes in DSS, I prefer to use DSS for stacking only and then process my images using another program. Make sure you have the latest version of DSS older version will only produce black and white. If you are able post up the fits file that you got from DSS.

[PembrokeSteve]

Hi,

Thanks to those forum members for the last 3 posts - for your very helpful advice concerning DSS.
Regards,

Steve