Wizard (NGC 7380) Bi-Colour

[Shibby]

I'm not particularly happy with this one having processed it. The Oiii is a bit noisy and I had to reject a few subs as my balance wasn't quite right on the night. However, I don't think I'll be getting any more data soon, so I'll post it as it is now!

I've also been struggling to get the brightness right, as it looks very different on each monitor. How does it look on your screen? Anyone got any tips?

The image is bi-colour Ha+Oiii. I gathered some RGB data for the stars, which I applied as a colour layer. The upload is at 50% - it does get scaled down in the post, so click through here for the full upload.

Acquisition

• Ha 7nm: 15x600s
• Oiii: 3nm 16x600s
• RGB: 3x4x120s

Equipment

• Atik 460ex
• Skywatcher MN190

[carastro]

Very nice.  I particularly like the added in RGB stars.

I managed to get a bit more blue coloration on Oiii in PS by using Image adjust/selective colour and twiddling with the Cyan, Blue and magenta.

Carole 

 

[vlaiv]

It looks good - I like it.

It indeed looks little dimmer than how it would usually be processed by most people, but I personally don't have an issue with that.

[Shibby]

22 hours ago, carastro said:

I managed to get a bit more blue coloration on Oiii in PS by using Image adjust/selective colour and twiddling with the Cyan, Blue and magenta.

Thanks, I'll have to try that. I tried adding an additional blue Oiii layer which helped a bit but not much.

21 hours ago, vlaiv said:

It indeed looks little dimmer than how it would usually be processed by most people

It's a real problem how different it can look - my newest/best monitor is far brighter than my laptop & work monitors. Do colour profiles help in some way? ??‍♂️

[vlaiv]

1 hour ago, Shibby said:

Thanks, I'll have to try that. I tried adding an additional blue Oiii layer which helped a bit but not much.

It's a real problem how different it can look - my newest/best monitor is far brighter than my laptop & work monitors. Do colour profiles help in some way? ??‍♂️

Colour profiles help with "faithful" colour representation. It depends on brightness in very strange ways. Take a piece of paper, one that you perceive as white and place it next to really bright source of white light - paper will turn to grey.

Our brain tends to "calibrate" color based on surrounding. We have what is called relative colour perception.

As for brightness of the image - there is also similar problem. If you process your image in very dark room - you can try this by working at a computer in low ambient light (night, turn off all other lights), and come back next day to same exact image in brightly lit room - on the same monitor, same image - it will look much darker.

I've found that this has two implications for processing - if you work in low light conditions and keep noise to be barely visible - it will not show at all in "day light" conditions on same monitor. But image will look darker in daylight. But if you process image in daylight and make noise barely visible - it will be very obvious if you look it in low light conditions (again on the same monitor) - target will have "proper" exposure and will be decently bright.

Probably best way to do it is - expose by day, and do noise control by night