Optolong L-enhance processing help

[David_Scotland]

Hi,

 

So managed to capture some data with my new filter after a week of poor weather, filter was great, really pulled out the nebula from the Heart Nebula in relatively short time. When processing through DSS with no calibration frames, i can see the nebula along with the lens glare of my Altair Hypercam 183C. These are stills taking from Sharpcap Livestack.

So i spent all morning making a dark file with the same exposure, temperature, and gain value from last night. When i add this dark file into the stack the red channel does not have a peak no more, see image, cant really explain  No matter what i do, stretch does not bring the red channel over enough to make a difference to the image

 

This is my first time processing with this filter, am i missing something? Do i process these images any different from normal images, special software, etc.

Cheers

[CloudMagnet]

Have you tried just aligning the RGB channels within DSS when it finishes stacking? Its not the perfect way but if you align the 3 histogram peaks together using the sliders, it should give you a fairly good colour balance.

[fireballxl5]

you need to process the image to remove the background colour (LP?) and balance the RGB. I just grabbed your jpeg and applied a DBE in PixInsight to get this, which brings out the nebula...

HTH, Andy

[David_Scotland]

So ran the files through DSS and aligned the RGB, before i started, this is what the RGB looks like, doesn't look normal to me

So lined them up saved with adjustments and ran in PS, screen glow is gone, but so is all the color... i did save as a 16bit tiff

So obviously i assume its the dark that is the problem as apart from the screen glow, i had no issues with color previously, albiet some processing was required

[CloudMagnet]

3 hours ago, David_Scotland said:

So ran the files through DSS and aligned the RGB, before i started, this is what the RGB looks like, doesn't look normal to me

So lined them up saved with adjustments and ran in PS, screen glow is gone, but so is all the color... i did save as a 16bit tiff

 

So obviously i assume its the dark that is the problem as apart from the screen glow, i had no issues with color previously, albiet some processing was required

That doesnt look right to me either, what filter were you using before this?

Edited May 5, 2020 by CloudMagnet

[David_Scotland]

Prior to the Optolong l-enhance i was using a cheap nasty moon and sky glow filter, and when i meant previously, i meant without the dark file attached

[David_Scotland]

Okay finally got to the bottom of the problem, for some weird reason it didn't like me taking a dark with the filter installed. Since i got that fixed grabbed a quick couple of images to test.

 

One of the Soul Nebula and Heart Nebula, only 2 nebulas in my field of view in my garden. Soul was 42x3m subs, heart was 13x3m subs

Not the greatest of images (basically my processing still sucks, still learning), these were processed in APP and touched up in photoshop, apparantly the weather for the rest of the week is sort of promising so going to try for 5-6 hours on the heart to try and bring out more data, plus capture some RGB of the stars

 

So there is light at the end of the tunnel....

[MarkAR]

Massive difference, well done for sorting it out.

Makes me think about some DSLR shots I tour a couple of months ago, might revisit them with different darks.