An early Leo Triplet - CCD + DSLR

[tooth_dr]

This is another image produced using CCD data I acquired at end of last week, with DSLR data from this time last year.

Leo Triplets

Atik 383L+ luminance 300s subs

QHY9M luminance 300s subs

Canon 40d unmodded 300s subs

Canon 1000d modded 300s subs

 

Any comments welcome.  I didn't get the flats issue sorted, so I tried to reduce the gradient using different tools, and I cropped the image too.

 

Thanks

Adam.

 

 

[toxic]

very nice indeed Adam

 

[Barry-Wilson]

I really great image Adam with a lot to admire, including the faint tidal tail.  Congratulations.

All very personal, for me, I'd be tempted to increase colour a tiny amount, either saturation or the C curve, perhaps both just a tiny amount to warm up the colours especially in the Triplet.

[Davey-T]

Nicely framed image Adam so having to crop it is no bad thing, stars just right and not detracting from the galaxies, well done and good job of combining different data sources, always good for a headache 

Dave

[Xiga]

You've done well Adam, this is already a really great image. The 3 galaxies are showing a ton of detail. I know, because i'm currently trying to process my own version (which only has 2.5 hrs of integration) and yours is leagues ahead in terms of detail. 

I agree with Barry & Dave's points above. You haven't really lost much by having to crop, and this is one of those targets that can take more saturation than you'd think. It helps to give the galaxies a bit of a 'Pop', but of course we're into personal preference territory now. 

One other thing - it might be an idea to try and tame the stars somewhat. The really bright one near the centre is drawing the eye quite a bit. I would maybe have a play with doing 2 stretches, one big (which you've already done) and a 2nd much smaller one. If you get the background levels equal, then it wouldn't be too difficult to just layer on the brighter stuff on top of the layer with the smaller stars. If you do this though, be careful not to lose the very faint tidal stream from the Hamburger Galaxy!

[tooth_dr]

19 hours ago, toxic said:

very nice indeed Adam

 

Thanks Chris, much appreciated.

18 hours ago, Barry-Wilson said:

I really great image Adam with a lot to admire, including the faint tidal tail.  Congratulations.

All very personal, for me, I'd be tempted to increase colour a tiny amount, either saturation or the C curve, perhaps both just a tiny amount to warm up the colours especially in the Triplet.

Thanks Barry. I’ll up the saturation, thanks for the feedback.  

18 hours ago, Davey-T said:

Nicely framed image Adam so having to crop it is no bad thing, stars just right and not detracting from the galaxies, well done and good job of combining different data sources, always good for a headache 

Dave

Headache indeed! APP is pretty good as long as you load the right ones in the right places lol

10 hours ago, Xiga said:

You've done well Adam, this is already a really great image. The 3 galaxies are showing a ton of detail. I know, because i'm currently trying to process my own version (which only has 2.5 hrs of integration) and yours is leagues ahead in terms of detail. 

I agree with Barry & Dave's points above. You haven't really lost much by having to crop, and this is one of those targets that can take more saturation than you'd think. It helps to give the galaxies a bit of a 'Pop', but of course we're into personal preference territory now. 

One other thing - it might be an idea to try and tame the stars somewhat. The really bright one near the centre is drawing the eye quite a bit. I would maybe have a play with doing 2 stretches, one big (which you've already done) and a 2nd much smaller one. If you get the background levels equal, then it wouldn't be too difficult to just layer on the brighter stuff on top of the layer with the smaller stars. If you do this though, be careful not to lose the very faint tidal stream from the Hamburger Galaxy!

I’ll try this Ciaran. I’m just getting to grips with basic masks, so will try to do what you recommend.

[jjosefsen]

Wow very nice. You make me want to try the same with some of my old DSLR data.

While that central star is rather bright, it is not "ugly" like some of the stars I wrestle with in my images, so to me ot isn't as much of an eye sore.

Keep posting this good stuff!

[codeman]

Verint nice image, great FOV

[ollypenrice]

When you get the tidal tail you're doing well, simple as that.

In other respects I agree with Barry. I know what I'd do in Photoshop but I wouldn't have a clue in PI.

Olly

[Ruud]

It's a wonderful image. Beautiful pastel colours on the galaxies, fine details in the disks, and the enormous wispy streamer coming off the Hamburger galaxy is recorded wonderfully well. Even the noise looks great, minimal and regular like a very fine film grain.

Thanks for a masterly portrait of the triplets!

 

 

[tooth_dr]

Thanks everyone, I'm humbled that you like this image.

I hooked up a new monitor to give me more desktop space and I was shocked at the difference.  I don't know which is more like how you all see it, this is the problem I guess we all face.

Here is a new version with some NR and increase in colour.  I used PS, not PI, so any tips please feel free to add comment.

 

[tooth_dr]

The background looks more messed up now. 

[Xiga]

The galaxies are looking really great now Adam. Top stuff!

I do see the sky background colour mottling. This is likely the result of using tools such as the Saturation slider in PS to increase the colour globally, including the sky background, which we obviously don't want to. 

I just had a quick play with your original version jpeg. I used a much better technique for colour saturation. I think it's credited to Jay GaBany, but it goes like this:

Create 3 duplicate layers above your background layer. Set the Top Layer blend mode to Luminosity, set the Middle one to Soft Light, and leave the 3rd one on Normal. Then just merge the 3 layers together. 

You can run it more than once, an d if you find that it starts to become too much, then just back off on the Opacity of subsequent merged layers. 

I quickly did this in PS, and it didn't create the mottled sky background from your latest version. 

As an aside, in future if you find that whatever method you use is still making the sky background worse, then you could simply create a mask based on the image itself, and only allow the colour through to the stars and galaxies. 

[Seanelly]

I'm blown away by this great image!

[Rodd]

Great triplet Doc....Very nice.  I like the color bump as well.

Rodd

[tooth_dr]

On 12/02/2019 at 04:01, Seanelly said:

I'm blown away by this great image!

Thanks so much for your comment!

On 12/02/2019 at 04:24, Rodd said:

Great triplet Doc....Very nice.  I like the color bump as well.

Rodd

Thanks Rodd, I'll come back to it again, but I saved over the layered version, so it'll be a full reprocess

On 11/02/2019 at 20:12, Ruud said:

It's a wonderful image. Beautiful pastel colours on the galaxies, fine details in the disks, and the enormous wispy streamer coming off the Hamburger galaxy is recorded wonderfully well. Even the noise looks great, minimal and regular like a very fine film grain.

Thanks for a masterly portrait of the triplets!

 

 

Thanks Rudd, very kind.

On 11/02/2019 at 19:45, ollypenrice said:

When you get the tidal tail you're doing well, simple as that.

In other respects I agree with Barry. I know what I'd do in Photoshop but I wouldn't have a clue in PI.

Olly

Thanks Olly, always nice to get feedback from you.  I use PS myself, never used PI.

On 11/02/2019 at 12:13, codeman said:

Verint nice image, great FOV

Thanks Codeman!

On 11/02/2019 at 11:17, jjosefsen said:

Wow very nice. You make me want to try the same with some of my old DSLR data.

While that central star is rather bright, it is not "ugly" like some of the stars I wrestle with in my images, so to me ot isn't as much of an eye sore.

Keep posting this good stuff!

Thanks The DSLR data is really good for adding colour, so I plan on getting lum for all my colour DSLR data.

[jjosefsen]

@tooth_dr Do you just add Lum/NB to your existing DSLR data or have you tried adding RGB data from filters as well?

[tooth_dr]

25 minutes ago, jjosefsen said:

@tooth_dr Do you just add Lum/NB to your existing DSLR data or have you tried adding RGB data from filters as well?

I have RGB filters but with the weather etc I haven’t had much luck. I’m just consolidation my existing DSLR data with mono data. 

[jjosefsen]

2 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

I have RGB filters but with the weather etc I haven’t had much luck. I’m just consolidation my existing DSLR data with mono data. 

Alright I understand.. I was just wondering if it was possible to integrate DSLR data with mono RGB data.

Adding luminance or narrowband seems straightfoward, but adding new RGB to OSC... Hmmm.. I suppose you could have your DSLR RGB master and add a combined RGB master to that maybe?

Or do you split the OSC RGB into channels and then combine it all into R, G, B master and then combine to RGB?

Just wondering about it

[jjosefsen]

Anyways... This image is really good and I really like your processing, looks so natural!

[tooth_dr]

Just now, jjosefsen said:

Anyways... This image is really good and I really like your processing, looks so natural!

Thanks again!

[Barry-Wilson]

Congratulations Adam on a fabulous result.  The additional boost to the colour has made all the difference.

Top drawer ? ?.

[ollypenrice]

The new colour is fabulous.

I came up with a Ps idea I'll explain below when processing my Triplet data:

1) Do a version in which you stretch the socks off the data to pull out the faint stuff. Not just the tail but the quasars near the Hamburger and the plentiful faint fuzzies. Get the background sky to your preferred value, in my case around 23/23/23 as measured in Colour Sampler.

2) Do a soft stretch looking only at the stars, keeping them small and colourful but getting the background to exactly the same values as the first. This is vital.

3) Paste 2 on top of 1 (slightly counter intuitive), set the opacity of 2 to zero so you can't see it and, using variously sized soft erasers on the top layer, remove the top over anything galactic, faint or fuzzy. Some patience is needed! When you restore the opacity of the top layer you have its small stars along with the highly stretched faint stuff.

It will only work if you get the backgrounds all but identical.

Olly

[Rob]

Very nice indeed. I just love the Leo triplet!

[tooth_dr]

On 13/02/2019 at 19:27, Barry-Wilson said:

Congratulations Adam on a fabulous result.  The additional boost to the colour has made all the difference.

Top drawer ? ?.

Thanks Barry, it's very rewarding to get this feedback from you.

On 13/02/2019 at 20:53, ollypenrice said:

The new colour is fabulous.

I came up with a Ps idea I'll explain below when processing my Triplet data:

1) Do a version in which you stretch the socks off the data to pull out the faint stuff. Not just the tail but the quasars near the Hamburger and the plentiful faint fuzzies. Get the background sky to your preferred value, in my case around 23/23/23 as measured in Colour Sampler.

2) Do a soft stretch looking only at the stars, keeping them small and colourful but getting the background to exactly the same values as the first. This is vital.

3) Paste 2 on top of 1 (slightly counter intuitive), set the opacity of 2 to zero so you can't see it and, using variously sized soft erasers on the top layer, remove the top over anything galactic, faint or fuzzy. Some patience is needed! When you restore the opacity of the top layer you have its small stars along with the highly stretched faint stuff.

It will only work if you get the backgrounds all but identical.

Olly

Thanks Olly.  I really appreciate you taking time to offer feedback and share your titbits of information.

26 minutes ago, Rob said:

Very nice indeed. I just love the Leo triplet!

Thanks Rob, much appreciated.