NGC 1499 RGB Ha (Learning Curve)

[Knight of Clear Skies]

After quite a lot of playing around in Photoshop, here's my RGB Ha California Nebula.

Hope you like it. Found this a challenge due to the enormous dynamic range of this object, the central area is just so bright compared to the outlying regions. Made use of layers in PS to blend in the brighter shock fronts. Used a lum layer from a blend of the Ha and RGB. My workflow probably made little sense but this is a learning curve for me. Looking at the above on my second too-bright monitor the background has gone a little odd somewhere, not sure if that will be a problem on other people's devices.

Here's the capture details for the RGB and Ha data. Looking at the old RGB image again I have some background dust, might have to blend that in if I can work out how.

[MarkAR]

Looks really good, lovely detail.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

@swag72 kindly gave me some tips and after quite a bit of messing about blending in layers I got this.

I raided the blue and green channels of the DSLR image to make a bit of a synthetic OIII layer. The end result isn't great, I think I've accidentally done some damage to the background and stars while blending but it was a very useful learning exercise.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Knight of Clear Skies

[TerryMcK]

It looks great. Well done on a difficult one.