First colour mosaic - Heart and Soul

[don4l]

This is my first attempt at a colour mosaic.  Despite the join being obvious,  I am still very pleased with it.

I've done several mono mosaics over the past 18 months and been surprised at how difficult it is to match up both contrast and brightness along the edges of adjacent frames.   I thought that going to colour would make the problem much worse.  It has made it a bit more difficult, but it isn't as awful as I expected.

 

Processing and combining was done in the Gimp.  Each panel is Ha, O, O for RGB.  The OIII data for the Soul is binned 2x2. 

Any advice on doing these using Photoshop or Gimp would be much appreciated.  All sorts of other comments would be welcome too - especially about how it looks on peoples screens.   I have a strong suspicion that my screen is too bright,  so I might be posting very dark images!!!

[alan potts]

Two really lovely images there and they look fine together. I asked a while back about mosaics and one member said there were easy in a software the name of which I have forgotten, it was one that many use though, but I don't have.

Alan 

[don4l]

1 hour ago, alan potts said:

Two really lovely images there and they look fine together. I asked a while back about mosaics and one member said there were easy in a software the name of which I have forgotten, it was one that many use though, but I don't have.

Alan 

Thanks.

I think that the software is APP (Astro Pixel Processor).  I downloaded the trial version about a year ago but I couldn't get it to work on my setup.  From what I hear, it is indeed very good.

[Laurin Dave]

Very nice, what equipment did you  use? I’ve used Pixinsight for mosaics, other applications I’m aware of that will do it are APP and Registar..  not done many but one of the key things to do is to minimise any gradients on the individual panels before combining.. 

Dave

[tooth_dr]

This is fantastic!  Not too bright at all on my screen.  I know you prefer to do things manually, but if you can get APP to work, the gradients will be gone and these will be seemlessly joined together!!

[don4l]

6 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

This is fantastic!  Not too bright at all on my screen.  I know you prefer to do things manually, but if you can get APP to work, the gradients will be gone and these will be seemlessly joined together!!

Thank you.  And thank you for the feedback about the brightness.  I've got two different screens, and my images look completely different on both - so I really have no idea how they look to other people.

 

I do tend to do things manually, but I'm not a complete Luddite!  I'm now imaging from my breakfast room using Indi, Linux, Astrometry.net, and various other stuff that I hadn't even heard of 18 months ago.

I will be changing ISP soon, and I will probably have another go at APP then.  There is only so much time that you can spend trying to get software to work.

[rotatux]

11 hours ago, don4l said:

[...] so I might be posting very dark images!!!

They are perfect for me (on my work monitor). I especially like that color balance of yours between red and blueish-white, and that stupendous amount of detail for a 2-pane mosaic 😛

[don4l]

9 hours ago, Laurin Dave said:

Very nice, what equipment did you  use? I’ve used Pixinsight for mosaics, other applications I’m aware of that will do it are APP and Registar..  not done many but one of the key things to do is to minimise any gradients on the individual panels before combining.. 

Dave

I thought that I had already answered - sorry,  I must have forgotten to click the submit button!

Moravian G3-16200, Chroma Ha and OIII filters, Tak FSQ-106 with F3.6 reducer.  Acquired with CCDCiel, calibrated with CCDStack, and post processed in the Gimp.  The camera is new and I am learning how to use it.  For some reason that I don't understand, the data needs far less processing that my last camera (an old STL6303).  I'm getting far better result than I ever did before, but there are also some "funnies" that I will have to get used to.  I didn't plan the colour scheme in the images above - it just turned out that way.

[JamesF]

Very nice looking images.  And on the strength of them I'm tempted to rename the Soul as "The Gnasher Nebula" :)

James

[MilwaukeeLion]

Well done, nice images.  Layer masks and brush tool in photoshop should be able to blend away that line completely.