IKO - LBN487 Iris Nebula LRGB - Processing Competition

[wimvb]

Lovely data which can take a beating. Here's my attempt, processed in PixInsight

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by wimvb
reprocess, and then some

[Xiga]

Oh, what data! I tried shooting this myself a couple of years back, but i was so disappointed with the quality of the data, i didn't even bother to process it fully. This data set, however, was an absolute joy to process!

For this, i used APP to create a Super Lum using both the Lum and RGB. APP also used to remove any gradients, combine the RGB, and do star colour calibration. Then into PS for the rest. 

The RGB was stretched manually in PS using Shadows/Highlights (to preserve the colour, although Arcsinh stretching also worked well). Some use of the Dehaze filter in PS, then Topaz Denoise AI used for NR and sharpening (core only). 

These days i always try and incorporate Sternet into my workflow, but on this occasion i had to admit defeat and resort to good old star reduction instead. I used a host of options, Noel's and Annie's actions, some use of the minimum filter, and also Images Plus too. 

Cheers!

[A320Flyer]

Hi,

Excellent data once again. This is my go at processing. Mostly done in PixInsight, with final tweaks in Photoshop:

Slight Crop on each channel

DBE on each channel

Slight NR (MLT) on R, G and B

Combined R, G and B into RGB colour

RGB stretched with HT

SynthLum created by summing Lum, R, G and B

Slight NR (MLT) on the SynthLum

SynthLum stretched with HT

HDRMT on the centre of the Iris

Small iterations of LHE on the centre of the Iris, progressing outwards to the dusty clouds with increasing Kernal Radius

Combined the SynthLum with the RGB using Channel Combination

Starnet++ to shrink the stars slightly, then MT to further reduce the size of the very smallest stars

Transfer to Photoshop as a 16bit TIFF

Curves, Levels and Selective Colour tweaks

Flatten and save as JPEG

Cheers

Bill

 

On hindsight, I felt that using the SynthLum made the stars too soft and I lost definition. This is basically the same LRGB but using straight Lum.

 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by A320Flyer

[bottletopburly]

processed in Startools 1.7

 

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by bottletopburly
re process

[TerryMcK]

My go of LBN487 processed in PixInsight

[carastro]

My second try, processed in Photoshop, usual levels and curves, and some HLVG, slight star reduction, some HP filter to the Iris and some lab colour:

 

 

 

Edited April 29, 2021 by carastro

[Skipper Billy]

Processed almost entirely in Pixinsight.

RGB

DBE

Channel combination

DBE

Background Neutralisation

Colour Calibration

Histogram Transformation

Mono

DBE

Histogram Transformation

Star Alignment 

Combined Mono with RGB

Dynamic Crop

DBE

TGV Denoise

Morphological Transformation

SCNR

Curves

Corrected Iris colour in Selective colour in Photoshop

Saved as TIFF and JPEG

 

 

iris nebula 1.tif

Edited April 27, 2021 by Skipper Billy
Added JPEG for easy viewing

[scotty38]

Here's my attempt done in Pixinsight but struggling to get some of the colours others seem to achieve yet using the same/similar processes. It's a long road.... 🙂

 

[wimvb]

5 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

Here's my attempt done in Pixinsight but struggling to get some of the colours others seem to achieve yet using the same/similar processes. It's a long road.... 🙂

Use scnr green, then saturate away.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Some Great processing so far with some nice data.

My 1st attempt all in PI.

Dynamic crop of LRGB
RGB Combo
DBE on Lum
ColorCalibration
HistogramTransformation RGB
HistogramTransformation  Lum
HDRMultiscaleTransform
LRGB Combo
SCNR
HistogramTransformation LRGB
Then  a bit of tweaking in CurvesTransformation to deepen the blue colour.

 

 

Steve

Edited April 28, 2021 by teoria_del_big_bang

[scotty38]

24 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Use scnr green, then saturate away.

Thanks will have another go although I think I did this first time round and got myself in a mess but also not sure how I should really combine/process and in which order.... Still learning 🙂

[scotty38]

21 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Some Great processing so far with some nice data.

My 1st attempt all in PI.

Dynamic crop of LRGB
RGB Combo
DBE on Lum
ColorCalibration
HistogramTransformation RGB
HistogramTransformation  Lum
HDRMultiscaleTransform
LRGB Combo
SCNR
HistogramTransformation LRGB

Then Upper image a bit of tweaking in CurvesTransformation to deepen the blue colour.

 

Steve

Hi Steve I tried a similar process but when I got to the LRGB combo I got stuck with some error message. How do you use that process when the RGB channels are already combined? I guess I'm missing something obvious....

[teoria_del_big_bang]

10 hours ago, scotty38 said:

Hi Steve I tried a similar process but when I got to the LRGB combo I got stuck with some error message. How do you use that process when the RGB channels are already combined? I guess I'm missing something obvious....

Well no in a way not obvious, but also not difficult. 
 I combine RGB using "ChannelCombination", I guess like you have done.

Then I do a bit of stretching of both the RGB combined image and the Lum image to get them to similar intensities, in actual fact this data is so good it probably does not need that but mine normally do.

Then depending on your processing techniques and preferences you may want to do some further processing of the RGB and Lum seperately before combining them.

Then to combine the Lum and RGB images using LRGBCombination.
But heres the "not so obvious" trick,, only select L and deselect RGB, then select  your Lum image in the drop down box and then drag the triangle in the lower left of the LRGBCombination process and drop it on your RGB image and it will combine them both. You may want to do some testing with the " Chrominance Noise Reduction" selected and deselected. Sometimes I think it helps and sometimes makes things worse, I often try both on two duplicate RGB images and see the results.

One further tip is I would duplicate the RGB image first so you have a copy because when you combine them it does not creste a new copy but updates the RGB image. As well as being able to keep a RGB only copy you can also compare them and see what adding the Lum has done.

I do assume that you can combine the RGB using this LRGBCombination process by only selecting RGB and not selecting L and then I assume it acts exactly the same as the ChannelCombination process but actually never done it that way.

And I am very much learning my processing methods so this may not be the perfect way to do it but it is how I did it.

Steve

Edited April 28, 2021 by teoria_del_big_bang

[scotty38]

Brilliant thanks Steve, dropping the Lum onto the RGB image is the bit I was missing as I was trying to pull the images into the tool which obviously can't be done with the RGB combined already....

[Rob63]

Not much Astro dark for me at this time of year so no more DSO's until September so it's great to have quality data to work with.

I decided to avoid my usual Pixinsight workflow to challenge myself using APP & Photoshop only (Processing details below image).

Astro Pixel Processor

Combine L-RGB

Remove light pollution
Calibrate background
Calibrate star colours

Export to Photoshop

Multiple small stretches with curves to get a good starting point for nebulosity work
Export
Starnet++ (required a low stride value)

Back to Photoshop

Multiple rounds of copy layer, curves, mask (I use Lumi32), copy merged to new layer
High pass filter on main nebula
Topaz DeNoise on darker parts of image
Combine nebula & stars

Adjust colour and saturation to taste (using Camera Raw)
Flatten and export

[tomato]

Here is my attempt, processed in Startools,  and Affinity photo. Super clean data as usual, default workflow in ST, then adjustments in Levels, Curves and Selective colour in AP.

[gorann]

Great and clean data! Probably the best Iris data I have processed. I did not use any NR on it. And nice to have something to process now when summer astrobrightness have settled on us up here. So thank you IKO people!

Processed in PS and PI.

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by gorann

[Budgie1]

I had a play around with the data again this evening using PI, only this time I changed the process slightly and boy can this data take some punishment :

Combine RGB, Dynamic Crop RGB then Lum to make sure they're the same size & crop.

Working only on RGB image - DBE, Noise reduction with MMT & MLT, Stretch, Starnet to remove stars, Curves, SCNR to reduce the green on the background then add the stars back in with PixelMath.

Lum - Noise reduction with MLT only, Curves using RGB to enhance then HDR on 6 layers to bring out the core.

Add Lum layer to RGB using LRGBCombination,  HDR again on 8 layers and some sharpening. Finally 30% Star Reduction using MorphologicalTransformation and resized the image.

I present to you The Rusty Window into The Cosmos.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

A 2nd attempt all in PI. Similar process to before but I used Starnet to remove stars for some of the processing to stop them getting bloated.

Dynamic crop of LRGB
RGB Combo
DBE on Lum
ColorCalibration
HistogramTransformation RGB
HistogramTransformation  Lum
Starnet on both RGB and Lum to remove stars and keep stars seperated for now
HDRMultiscaleTransform
LRGB Combo
SCNR
HistogramTransformation LRGB
CurvesTransformation
Pixelmath to combine LRGB and Stars

 

Steve

 

[derrickf]

It's been a few years since I processed an image but I've recently started to re-learn what little I used to know about astro image processing. Big thank you to the team for making this high quality dataset available to us, the high SNR of the data makes a big difference to the processing choices available.

The image was processed in PI then saved as a 32 bit TIF which was then saved as a JPG from Affinity Photo (no other processing was undertaken in Affinity). The main processing steps in PI were:
RGB channel combination
Photometric colour calibration
Noise reduction (TGV denoise & MMT)
Stretch to non-linear

Noise reduction of L channel (TGV Denoise & MMT)
Mild Sharpening with LMT
Stretch to non Linear
Sharpening with HDMRT

LRGB Combination
Star reduction (using Adam Block method)
Colour saturation  and Intensity tweaking using Curves Transformation
Save as 32 bit TIF for transport to Affinity Photo from which it was saved in JPG format for submission here.

I'll probably take another shot at it to see if I can recover more of the star colour

[derrickf]

A bit more colour in this one 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

3rd and final attempt.
Only thing I was not keen on in 1st attempt was the bloated stars and the halos on the stars, on 2nd attempt I did not like the colours in the Nebula. Also I felt the amount of stars tended to overpower the target in both images.
So had a final try removing stars part way through processing to keep the stars small and before the halos developed. 

And before the stars were put back

Dynamic crop of LRGB
RGB Combo
DBE on Lum
ColorCalibration
HistogramTransformation RGB
HistogramTransformation  Lum
HDRMultiscaleTransform
LRGB Combo
SCNR
Starnet to remove stars
HistogramTransformation LRGB
CurvesTransformation to deepen the blue colour
Final Histogram transformation
Pixelmath to add stars back in

Steve

Edited April 30, 2021 by teoria_del_big_bang

[Fugel]

First time processing data of this quality! Really nice.

Here's my attempt, combined each colour with luminance in Siril, did a small amount colour correction.

Levels and curves for first stretch in Affinity Photo, removed stars with Starnet++

Further levels, curves and contrast to starless version in Affinity and recombined star layer.

 

Starless version

[RussCarpenter]

Processed on my iMac running Big Sur, StarTools 1.7.461 and Affinity Photo Beta. In StarTools I used AutoDev, Wipe, AutoDev, Contrast, HDR Optimize Soft, HDR Reveal DSO Core, Sharp, Decon, Color, Super Structure and Unified DeNoise. In Affinity Photo Beta I made small adjustments to the tone curve and clarity, and exported to PNG.

 

Edited May 1, 2021 by RussCarpenter
Submit jpg

[Lee_P]

Wow, I've never worked with such good data! I decided to focus in on the central nebula and try to bring out its details.

 

 

PixInsight:
* LRGB combine
* DBE
* ColorCalibration
* EZ SoftStretch
* Create a mask, apply LocalHistogramEqualization to add contrast to the central nebula
* Starnet++ to create starless version and starless mask
* Save starless version as a TIF and export to Lightroom...

Lightroom:
* Topaz DeNoise AI
* Boost Clarity
* Boost Saturation and Vibrance
* Save as TIF and export to PixInsight...

PixInsight
* PixelMath to add stars back in
* Save as TIF and export to Lightroom...

Lightroom
* 1x1 crop
* Boost Texture, Clarity, and a touch of Dehaze
* Little bit of Sharpening
* Colour Noise Reduction (I want the central nebula to be almost hypnotic, so this step was to desaturate the outer stars -- limiting the viewer's peripheral vision, focussing attention on the centre).
* Reduce Highlights over the central star

 

Just for fun, here's a comparison with the best data I've managed (Bortle 8, Askar FRA400, ASI 2000MC, no filters, 20 hours of integration). IKO wins 😂

 

Edited May 1, 2021 by Lee_P