LrgbHA processing

[LordLoki]

Hi all,

I finally got my rig back up and running and got a couple of hours of HA Data on the rosette nebula. If the clouds let me i would like to get some color into the picture and i wonder what would be the best approach.

Currently i have 40x180 subs  taken with Asi1600 mono at 75 gain binning 1x1 through HA filter now the question is what to get next.

I thought since HA is mostly red i could just take Blue and Green and use HA as red channel? or would it be better to take full RGB?

Also since i am new to Mono imaging should i run with the same settings for gain etc on the color exposures binning same as well? and is there any advice on ratio between HA exposure vs Color? 

Thanks in advance 

Edit: here my first Processing of the HA Data

 

Edited March 11, 2021 by LordLoki

[LordLoki]

All right was lucky and grabbed 1.5 hours on each channel today with same settings will figure out how to combine them tomorrow and give an update

[Snoani]

19 hours ago, LordLoki said:

I thought since HA is mostly red i could just take Blue and Green and use HA as red channel? or would it be better to take full RGB?

Also since i am new to Mono imaging should i run with the same settings for gain etc on the color exposures binning same as well? and is there any advice on ratio between HA exposure vs Color? 

 

It looks like you have some nice data in H-alpha. 

I am not an expert on this subject as I am still relatively new to imaging in mono myself but have made some advances in recent weeks.  Ifyou did use the H-alpha as the red channel I think you would find that it will make the image too red and in my limited experiments a blend of H-alpha and red will provide you with some of the colour and detail from the H-alpha while also retaining some of the more natural look of red.  

You may find that you also need some luminance to provide your image with some of the finer details.  You can use the H-alpha as a luminance channel but this may washout the colour of your image to make it pink.

Experimentation is key and after a couple of months it is only in the last week that I feel that I am beginning to get my head around mono capture and processing.    

Jem

[Mr Thingy]

14 minutes ago, Snoani said:

You may find that you also need some luminance to provide your image with some of the finer details.  You can use the H-alpha as a luminance channel but this may washout the colour of your image to make it pink.

I tried this recently on the Rosette nebula and it did indeed wash the colour out, to turn it a pinky colour. 

Not sure if I'm doing something wrong but using Ha as the luminance layer just doesn't seem to lead to a pleasing finish.

I also tried HaRGB on M42 to mitigate the effects of the moon, with the same effect. In the end I created a luminance layer from the RG channels, which improved the image.

[LordLoki]

3 hours ago, Snoani said:

It looks like you have some nice data in H-alpha. 

I am not an expert on this subject as I am still relatively new to imaging in mono myself but have made some advances in recent weeks.  Ifyou did use the H-alpha as the red channel I think you would find that it will make the image too red and in my limited experiments a blend of H-alpha and red will provide you with some of the colour and detail from the H-alpha while also retaining some of the more natural look of red.  

You may find that you also need some luminance to provide your image with some of the finer details.  You can use the H-alpha as a luminance channel but this may washout the colour of your image to make it pink.

Experimentation is key and after a couple of months it is only in the last week that I feel that I am beginning to get my head around mono capture and processing.    

Jem

thanks for the tips I think you are right experimentation is key and it gives me something to do for the next week that are forecasted to be very cloudy :D

I have also an hour of Luminance Data available so i will start experimenting with it. and post some updates here on how its going :D

[LordLoki]

Allright I gave it my first go and id did not turn out terrible.

i will play with it a bit more over the next days and see what i can improve. 

Rough Workflow

Cropped the image then did background extraction and noise reduction on each channel individually

Streched each channel then created starmask and starless image from the HA, combined them to a single mask. 

Applied mask to R,G,B and HA and used curves to bring down the Background then used pixelmath to create RGB using R+HA*0.75 G+HA*0.1 B+HA*0.15 

Edit: if I wanted to add luminance as well should I put that in Alpha or also blend in the other channels? 

Edited March 11, 2021 by LordLoki