M42 - The Orion Nebula

[Taman]

I managed to take this on Wednesday, when the clouds decided to disappear!

37 x 75s lights, stacked and processed in Photoshop only, with no darks or flats.

Starnet++ was used to create a star mask. The vignetting seems to frame the image nicely, so I did not attempt to correct it!

 

 

[Sunshine]

WOW, with that result i wonder if darks, brights, whites, flats, circulars, tubulars, bias, non bias are worth the trouble lol.

Beautiful image with amazing detail in those wisps of gas.

[Taman]

6 hours ago, Sunshine said:

WOW, with that result i wonder if darks, brights, whites, flats, circulars, tubulars, bias, non bias are worth the trouble lol.

Beautiful image with amazing detail in those wisps of gas.

Thanks Sunshine! I think this technique will only work with certain images.

I had never tried this before and am amazed how the image has nearly no noise at all.

Edited January 18, 2020 by Taman

[Ouroboros]

Interesting. I'm curious how you stack 37 images in Photoshop. I've done it once or twice manually with a few images and found that quite tedious, or have you got a PS plug in that registers the images and stacks them? 

[Taman]

53 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

Interesting. I'm curious how you stack 37 images in Photoshop. I've done it once or twice manually with a few images and found that quite tedious, or have you got a PS plug in that registers the images and stacks them? 

I'm using Photoshop CS6, which automates some of this.

Click on File - Scripts - Load files into stack, choose your raw files and tick the auto align and create smart object boxes.

Once the process has run, click on Layer - Smart Objects - Stack Mode - Median.

This will stack all the layers together. Then flatten the image for more processing.

I have not tried the other stack modes yet, but entropy looks interesting for HDR images.

Make sure your computer is fast and has plenty of memory. My 37 images took over 20 minutes to stack!

[Ouroboros]

@Taman OK. Thanks. That makes sense. I have an older CS5 version of photoshop which doesn't I think have a stacking feature. These days anyway I'm using Pixinsight for the whole process. 

[orion25]

Amazing photos, Taman! I don't often stack my images but you really show the benefits of doing so! Beautiful color and detail!

Regards,

Reggie

[Taman]

Thanks Reggie, much appreciated!

The fun part is processing and no two images are processed the same.