Mono acquisition strategy

[Shimonu]

How do you approach the acquisition balance between filters? Do you analyze the target and which colours/gases it consists of and focus your acquisition on filters that should have most signal?

My first real target with LRGB mono was the Crescent nebula I experienced that using less blue and luminance for example in the stacking would give me a nicer red. If I included an event amount of data on all filters then I felt the image was almost washed out and white/grey in the nebulosity while I expected it to bring out the nebulosity even more.

Perhaps my issue is more of a stacking and post-processing problem but I suppose you could avoid it directly by choosing to balance with the filters.

[rickwayne]

My starting point is to attempt to reproduce what's coming down through the optics. So I will shoot equal R, G, and B (though often significantly more luminance), composite them in Photoshop or Astro Pixel Processor, and adjust from there.

That said, managing color balance is probably one of my weakest areas in processing, so I'd be eager to learn more.

Now, if you were talking narrowband, that's a horse of another hue. The Ha signal is so much stronger than the others that unless you want a primarily monochrome image, or a very noisy one, you'll wind up shooting more OIII and SII.

Edited September 24, 2021 by rickwayne