M42 HDR ISO 400 Stacked in Registar total Exposure 20,030s (5h 37m)

[Psychobilly]

Here's my latest attemp on a HDR image of M42 this time taken at ISO400 for better colour. the Subs were 15,30,60,120,240,360 and 540s individual sets of exposures were processed in DSS with Bias and Dark Frame subtraction. The resulting files were then registered and stacked in Registar before post processing in CS3... Processed for the outer dark dust detail... It still needs some touching up...

(click to enlarge)

Next i'll try my manual method...

Thanks for Looking

Billy...

[Psychobilly]

A quick tidy up and a synthetic L channel added...

(click to enlarge)

Forgotten to do thay synthetic L ops to the other images i have posted ... hmmmm

[George]

Second image is much better Peter.

[Psychobilly]

And just to check I did it by hand as well in CS3...

(click to enlarge)

Much easier in Registar

[Les Tilly]

with your manual method did you use masking in Photoshop ?

I am drawn towards the secound image as the core does not look blown out

Great image

Les

[Psychobilly]

Hi Les,

There is no masking involved which is what makes it differernt. The Stacks are aligned and then layered with the longest at the bottom through to the shortest at the top. Then the opacity of each layer is adjusted for the deisired effect I normally use (1-((n-1/n)) % so for 5 layers then its 20% per layer

Seems to result in a smooth image with no noticeable joins... something which I havent down with this one is extract the stars from the longest exposure and then add them back in to the others which boosts them.

Billy...

The first oen was done automatically in Registar just gave it the individual fiels ant let it get on with it... there area lot more settigns to fiddle with in it but theres only an online help rather than a manual and I had to install the updtae for Vista to be able toi use the old Win32 format help files...

I printed most of the higher level help pages in work today...so will ahev to have a read

Billy...

[Les Tilly]

I guess I meant to say layers I kind of do the same thing in photoshop with layers Hows the weather holding up over there

Regards

Les

[Psychobilly]

Had a thaw today... positively balmy +3 forecat to freeze again tonight but cloud rolling in at the moment...

Billy...

[Tim]

Nice one Peter. That faint stuff is incredibly tricky to pull out of the background if you have any trace of LP, so you have done well, especially on the third version which is starting to show some structure to the red stuff.

I think a real dark sky and a more southerly position would help tremedously with picking it out, but manual processing is definetly better, most packages and tools get rid of the red as noise.

Cheers

TJ