M51 (another one) - my best so far

[Erling G-P]

My best M51 so far, combining data from two nights this week.  Wish I could get rid of the noise/grain, but whenever I try, I feel that the image gets too soft, smearing details.  I'm attaching both a cropped version, with unaltered size, and a reduced one, showing the full field.

46 x 200 sec + 73 x 200 sec = 238 minutes

SW 200PDS

HEQ5Pro / Rowan belt mod

Canon 700Da cooled

Staraid autoguider

Bortle 4 sky

Stacked with DSS & processed with Astroart 6

[Marvin Jenkins]

Fantastic. As a newbie myself I would be chuffed to bits with that. I actually prefer the uncropped image, you have so much colour and detail I think it looks great against it’s natural backdrop. 
 

Marv

[Jiggy 67]

Impressive results, stars are sharp and nice detail and colors.

[rickwayne]

Well, that's got it goin' ON. Nice detail and the colors look natural.

I have been getting some pretty decent results out of Topaz DeNoise. I bought their original product and now really like the "AI" version. I particularly enjoy the split-frame/slider user interface, which shows the original on one side and the processed version on the other side of the divider, which you can move back and forth.

[Erling G-P]

Thanks for the kind words guys

I'll take a closer look at Topaz DeNoise, so thanks for the suggestion.

[Erling G-P]

Downloaded a trial version of Topaz DeNoise.

It appears promising, but regrettably I had to work with the finished .jpg, as it apparently doesn't recognize .FTS format from DSS, or .fit from Astroart.

Would you happen to know if the save feature doesn't work in the trial version ?   I can find no mention of it on their website or in the emails received.  Program acts like it's saving, but I can't find the supposed file afterwards.  Repeated saves with same name & parameters also doesn't show any overwriting prompts.

[carastro]

Excellent.

Carole 

[geoflewis]

Both look great, but maybe a bit too magenta, so I took them into PS and nudged the colour balance shadows and midtones sliders a tad towards green, which to me gave them a more natural look. YMMV of course.

[Adam1234]

Very nice

[DougM43]

Very nice indeed,, well worth the effort 🙂 well done.

[Ouroboros]

Looks very nice on my iPad screen. It looks very smooth to me. Velvety is the word that comes to mind for some reason or other. 

[Erling G-P]

Thanks again everyone for the kind words.  Geoff, I have no magenta tint on my screen, but it just shows how difficult it is to predict how an image will look for others - there's probably not two of us using the same screen, so we may all see the images differently

[geoflewis]

2 minutes ago, Erling G-P said:

Geoff, I have no magenta tint on my screen, but it just shows how difficult it is to predict how an image will look for others

ok, so probably my screen then 🥴

[Erling G-P]

6 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

ok, so probably my screen then 🥴

Or it could be mine! 😉

[Erling G-P]

Found the answer to my own question above regarding saving from a trial version of Topaz DeNoise.  Seems it only saves the images once I shut down the program, as they all appeared after doing that 🤨

Here's an example - I think it's suppressed the croma noise significantly, without blurring the details too badly.

[gilesco]

If you're getting quality shots like that, I wouldn't agonized about a few tints! Good job!