IKO - M33 LRGBHa - Processing Competition

[Neko]

Last try! .... unless I can come up with something very different! haha 

Again thank you for let us play with this wonderfull set of files hope some day I can capture something this awesome myself! 

This was with new H-a v2 file, RGB legacy  in Compose module in StarTools v1.7 . Not layering, just straight blending of red + h-a. then

compose as usual. 

I still think there is some faint nebulosity around so tried to pull it out and like it this way : ) 

 

 

[BranocsSky]

Thank you for supplying the data, I am still learning about processing, but I am happy with the colours. I used Affinity Photo for the processing.

[Skipper Billy]

My humble effort!! 95% in Pixinsight - 5% in Photoshop

Processed the Ha and Lum data to completion individually

Blended the Ha and Lum images in Pixelmath - several different % blends until I was happy.

DBE

From this point on treated the Ha/Lum as the Lum layer

RGB had DBE on each

Channel Combination

DBE

Background Neutralisation

Histogram Transformation

Curves to create punchy colours

Very gentle Convolution to smooth what little noise there was

Star Alignment

LRGB Combination

Dynamic Crop

DBE

TGV Denoise

Very gentle Morphological Transformation

Unsharp Mask

SCNR

Curves

Fixed minor blotches of colour noise.

Slightly reduced largest stars in Photoshop using layers and eraser

High Pass filter in Photoshop

Minor tweaking in Photoshop using Camera Raw Filter

Back to Pixinsight - blended 5% Ha with 95% of above image in Pixelmath to add definition.

Final tweaks in Curves and Colour saturation

Saved as TIFF and JPEG

Enjoyed a wee dram  

M33 finished.tif

[matt_baker]

Had another shot at this data. Tried to not go so hard on the saturation this time and tone down the Ha a little as not to overpower the image. Zooming in really shows off the core and I focused on the dust lanes more as well.

Workflow all done in PixInsight.

RGB and Ha:

Crop - RGB Combine with Ha - DBE - PMCC - 0.5x SCNR - TGV - ArcSinStretch

Lum:

Crop - DBE - Decon - TGV -  ArcSinStretch - Starnet - Curves - LocalHistogramEqualisation  - UnsharpMask

LRGB:

Linear fit Lum with RGB - Combine - Curves - Saturation - Export

 

 

 

Edit: Brightened background slightly and galaxy

 

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by matt_baker

[Hallingskies]

This really is a splendid processing exercise, so thanks to the team for providing the data.  The challenge for me was to show up the faint outlying galactic arms and the wonderful swirls of embedded Ha emission areas without losing the delicate dust lanes that delineate the spiral arms in the brighter central zone.  It was very clean data, with little noise or gradients that I could see and all perfectly registered, which made the task a lot easier.  

First step was to log stretch each channel in Astroart.  I gave the Ha channel a harder stretch than the others to ensure the outlying emission areas would be seen in the final blend.  RGB channels merged in Paint Shop Pro to give a colour image.  This was rather green, so cranked it back a bit using PSP's channel mixer.  Then merged the stretched Ha channel with the red one, then added  "de-stretched"  blue and green channels in RGb to give a colour image where the Ha areas predominated.  This was layered over the original colour image in blend lighten mode to give a colour image with the red Ha regions showing up well, particularly those interesting faint Tarantula-like areas in the outer arms.

The stars did get a bit bloated with the initial log stretch. To reduce this, I ran the Ha, R, G and B tifs through Starnet, then repeated the above to give a starless colour image, to which was added an RGB star layer from the unstretched RGB data (mild gaussian blur then layered over in screen mode to avoid that "stuck on" look) to restore the reduced stars. I then layered the "re-starred starless" image over the top of the starry version in "normal" mode.  About a 40% layer shrank the stars nicely without losing detail.  I saw no need to use any noise reduction on the main object at all - I think M33 is an inherently "grainy" object and it only serves to chuck away precious detail.  A final bit to selective sharpening and contrast adjustment in PSP gave this...

 

 

 

Edited March 11, 2021 by Hallingskies
Processing description amended. Higher resolution jpeg added

[Jonk]

I'm not used to galaxy processing, but here goes!

Pixinsight linear fit, stretching, deconvolution on L and ha, create LhaRGB then just play with curves and a bit of sharpening and noise reduction in Lightroom.

[Viktiste]

Here is my effort. Very nice to practice on these data set's, thanks again for posting them.

Processed mainly in Pixinsight.  But I have also applied some sharpen filters in Affinity Photo. And the Ha was edited in Affinity photo before it was added to the LRGB using Pixelmath.

 

[Laurin Dave]

Here's my attempt.... A combination of Pixinsight and Photoshop..... process I followed below image..

 

Firstly RGB in Pixinsight... Linear Fit of Blue and Green to Red channel, RGB channel combination..  a touch of DBE..  run HSVrepair script to repair star core colour, recombine H, S and V channels...   ArcSinh stretch at 7, light touch Histogram Transformation then Masked Stretch, save as 16bit tiff. 

Luminance in Pixinsight ... a touch of DBE, then Histogram Transformation .. save as 16 bit tiff..   apply Masked Stretch  and again save as a 16 bit tiff.. 

Hydrogen Alpha..   Histogram Transformation,  remove stars with StarNet.. save as 16 bit tiff .... 

Photoshop ..  open RGB, convert to Lab colour mode, increase contrast on "a" and "b"  channels by 30%, convert back to RGB mode..  Make two copy layers...  set top to "Soft Light mode" .... merge with middle layer... set merged layer to "Colour" mode" and merge down...   

Duplicate RGB image and split into RGB channels..   open starless Ha..  increase contrast..  copy and paste Ha onto Red Channel, set Ha to blend mode "Lighten" ...  fiddle about with levels and contrast (applied to the Ha layer only)  so that only the Ha regions change brightness..  Copy the combined Red/Ha image and paste back into the Red channel in the RGB image..   do the same with Green and Blue but lower the opacity of Ha to around 7 for Green and around 15 for Blue (this make the Ha a bit pink)..  Save as HaRGB image ..   

Open the Histogram stretched Luminance... copy and paste it onto the HaRGB image..  set blend mode to Luminance and 20% opacity..   increase colour saturation in RGB layer by say 10%..  apply Gaussian blur of 0.6 pixels to RGB layer ..  merge down..... repeat 5 times, although maybe skip the colour saturation and blur steps on later ones if it gets too saturated..  save as L_HaRGB image..   

Apply Noel's actions  "Star Reduction" and "Increase Star Colour" .. save ..  Apply Noel's action Local Contrast Enhancement.....  set as "Layer On Top"..  decide which areas of the LCE enhanced image you like and at what opacities and apply them to the base image using copy layers..  Save image..   

Open in Pixinsight..  extract Luminance... run StarNet with "Create Star Mask" ticked..  when complete subtract the Star Mask from the Starless image using PixelMath...  apply the resulting image as a Mask ..  apply Multiscale Median Transform sharpening to the Luminance channel of the image with Layer 2 bias set to 0.2 and layer 3 bias set to 0.1...  save image..   

Open in Photoshop and also open HT and Masked Stretched Luminance image ..  apply Luminance to L_HaRGB at 20% .. save image..  

Open In Pixinsight...  apply Script "Dark Structure Enhance".... save image ..  Open DSE and non DSE image in Photoshop... merge together to taste..  crop edges rotate 180 degrees and save,

Dave

 

 

[Spikey]

A few firsts here !

M33 has always been my absolute nemesis and I'm pleased to have been able to use some excellent data to play with.

Secondly, this is my first go at using PixInsight and I haven't really got a clue what I'm doing. Anyway, I did so much that I've forgotten what I did but I am very pleased with the result !

 

[Anne S]

Heres a second try using the revised Ha datastack. The main difference in the processing for this one is that I used the NBRGB script to combine the new Ha with the RGB imaged before incorporating the luminance date after HDR. The image was quite red so I used SNCR to reduce the red by 20% several times until I liked the result.

Roll on the next dataset!

[The Admiral]

Oh what the heck! Might as well have a go, even though I've only processed OSC colour data before. I tried to use Affinity Photo (totally new to me and had to give up). This is the result of using APP which I've only recently become acquainted with.

Combined with the 'Combine RGB' tool, using just 13% Ha, did a background calibration and calibrated star colours, and then final tweak in Lightroom to reduce the brightness a tad, adjust the black point, add some clarity, sharpen a little and some gentle luminance noise reduction.

Ian

Edited March 13, 2021 by The Admiral

[carastro]

There are some VERY nice renditions on this thread, I wouldn't like to be the judges trying to choose. 

Carole 

[dannybgoode]

3 hours ago, carastro said:

There are some VERY nice renditions on this thread, I wouldn't like to be the judges trying to choose. 

Carole 

Agreed - and it always surprises me how so many different but equally compelling versions of the same data are created :)

[Xiga]

M33 was the 2nd ever DSO i imaged (a meagre 2 hrs of data with a DSLR). With such a low surface brightness, i can remember just how hard a target it is to process. Having this much quality data to work with is a joy, and a world apart from what i had to work with 4 years ago! 

I worked on this, here and there, over the course of a few nights, so i'll try and summarise the main steps i took as best i can, although with it mostly being in PS, it's impossible to replicate exactly. 

I used APP to create the RGB image, correct any gradient and do star colour calibration. For the Lum, i bucked the trend it seems, and didn't actually use the real Lum channel at all. I found it to be a bit too over-powering, and the stars were a bit on the big side, so instead i created 2 stacks. A synthetic Lum using the RGB channels, and another using the Synthetic Lum and the Ha. Then, i used a blend of 33/67 (or 67/33, i can't quite remember!) of the two to create the final Base Lum. This had the advantage of much smaller stars, and with all the lovely Ha detail showing through too (the Ha data was truly a thing of beauty!). I stretched the final Lum in APP, but took the colour into PS to stretch manually. For this, i took a new approach for me. I delved into my copy of 'Lessons from the Masters' (which i've had for a couple of years now, but realised there were sections i had overlooked) and used Adam Block's method of stretching colour - first use Levels and bring in the white point, then do several iterations of the Shadows and Highlights Tool (Shadows only). I figured if it's good enough for him, it'll do for me! 

I then added the Ha again in blend mode Lighten (to the Reds only) to bring them out more (it seemed a shame not to!). Then it was just the usual array of many, many small adjustments, too many to list. No star reduction needed either, due to not using the Lum channel. 

Thanks for sharing. Although i'm not sure how i'm going to be able to go back to my own crumby data after this lol 😋

[gorann]

Hi all,

yes many good versions here and I am working on mine. To get a break I now entertained myself by downloading 10 versions posted here (which I subjectively thought looked rather good - no names mentioned), and then made a composite where every version was weighed in as 10%. So this is what the average M33 looks like right now😁. Obviously this posting is outside the competition!

Cheers, Göran

[The Admiral]

Well, let me add another then .

The itch needed scratching I'm afraid . I rather felt that my previous attempt was somewhat too blue, so I took the output back into Lightroom and began moving sliders around. Principally I made a white balance shift towards the warm, reduced brightness a tad, and played with the HSL sliders, beefing up the red in particular. Changed the cropping a little too. May be it would be better to play more in the primary fits processing rather than with the final tiff, but hey ho. Just one of an infinity of possible variations, as we are seeing by all the responses so far!

Call it a day now I think!

Ian

Edited March 14, 2021 by The Admiral

[scotty38]

I’ve had a try too but nothing to post as I’m still learning how to combine the various elements. I’ve managed to get a colour image out of just the LRGB so far but need to find further tutorials on how I should be adding the rest.... I’ll get there I think. One thing I have learned so far is that I’m glad I entered this game with OSC 🤣

[bottletopburly]

2 hours ago, scotty38 said:

I’ve had a try too but nothing to post as I’m still learning how to combine the various elements. I’ve managed to get a colour image out of just the LRGB so far but need to find further tutorials on how I should be adding the rest.... I’ll get there I think. One thing I have learned so far is that I’m glad I entered this game with OSC 🤣

What program are you using?

[scotty38]

47 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

What program are you using?

I’m using Affinity at the minute.

[wimvb]

My contribution. Processed in PixInsight

 

Edited March 14, 2021 by wimvb

[gorann]

Here is mine (for the time being). Processed in PS and a bit in PI. Great data so almost no NR applied.

 

 

Edited March 14, 2021 by gorann

[Luke Newbould]

Hi everyone,

Loads of beautiful renditions in this thread so far! - the bar is set very high indeed

I decided to have a go in PixInsight, I've tried a lot of different things while doing it so honestly I've lost track of how I actually ended up at this!

major things are -

 

Dynamic crop

gently stretched all channels

cloned r+ha, ran Starnet on both but only kept the star mask from the r channel, combined the r+ha in pixelmath at 50/50 weights, then added back in the r stars to the resultant image

lrgb combination

DBE a few times over

clone the image and run hdrmultiscaletransform on one of them, then pixelmath the two back together with around 80/20 weighting (20 being the HDR one)

followed by various operations to mask and saturate selectively while messing around

I didn't bother with any noise reduction on this image, I didn't find the noise grain overly offensive

 

lots of fun! I'll probably try again at some point though.

 

Edited March 14, 2021 by Luke Newbould
doubleposted image

[bottletopburly]

10 hours ago, scotty38 said:

I’m using Affinity at the minute.

I’m using Startools 1.7 ,Dave Eagle has a new affinity book coming out which may be of interest 

https://www.star-gazing.co.uk/WebPage/shop/

[scotty38]

1 hour ago, bottletopburly said:

I’m using Startools 1.7 ,Dave Eagle has a new affinity book coming out which may be of interest 

https://www.star-gazing.co.uk/WebPage/shop/

Many thanks and yep I have that book. I just downloaded the APP trial as it happens but like most of these things first glance tells me there's another learning curve there too 🙂 I'm going to have another play with Affinity later, I mean I know it can be done as I have already created an image with 4 "items" so adding 2 more with Ha should be more of the same, I just need to check what I'm supposed to do with colours etc etc.

If I cannot get it looking in the same sort of ballpark that I'm seeing on here with Affinity I might just go PixInsight for the "easiest" given the amount of tutorials that are available.

 

[bottletopburly]

8 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

Many thanks and yep I have that book. I just downloaded the APP trial as it happens but like most of these things first glance tells me there's another learning curve there too 🙂 I'm going to have another play with Affinity later, I mean I know it can be done as I have already created an image with 4 "items" so adding 2 more with Ha should be more of the same, I just need to check what I'm supposed to do with colours etc etc.

If I cannot get it looking in the same sort of ballpark that I'm seeing on here with Affinity I might just go PixInsight for the "easiest" given the amount of tutorials that are available.

 

Startools is free to try and vastly cheaper than others