Finally

[dark knight]

Well my Cannon 6D has now been modded  by Andy Ellis and my L-Enhance arrived from RVO last week, so last night I finally managed to get out under the stars in an attempt to try things out even though the full moon was up and the temperatures here in the south of the UK were against me. As if that wasn't enough gremlins started to conspire against me too, first mount didn't want to talk to Astroberry and when it did the syncing seemed way off using plate solving,  How strange I thought, never had this before, went out to the mount, checked cables, checked for snags etc etc, checked focus twice,  then noticed next doors Elder tree had grown, it had shot up above the fence and was now partially obscuring the FOV!!!! problem recognised, solution - choose another area of sky. Plate solved, synced, great here we go,,,,, camera indi driver then decided to crash in Ekos!!!!! never once happened to me before, yet last night it happened 3 times in a row!!!! its a good job I'm quite a stubborn fellow, got it all talking again, slewed to NGC6960 and plate solved, so far so good, a quick tweak and the first of 40x 2min subs were underway!!! Anyhow here's the result, fairly pleased as my processing skills leave a lot to be desired and will need more data for the OIII, also the framing could have been better but overall I'm more pleased the gremlins didn't beat me!

Esprit 120ED, Canon6D, L-Enhance, Guided, 40 x 2 min subs, 50 Bias Frames, stacked in APP and basic processing in photoshop, any comment good bad or indifferent very welcome.

[michael8554]

Hi Carl

A good start, the Canon 6D gives a very clean image.

Did you Dither as you aren't using Darks ?

Centre of frame seems bright, are the Flats working correctly ?

Michael

 

[dark knight]

Hiya Michael,  yes I did dither every sub and used bias frames but did not take flats as I've not got the experience of working with them yet. I image from the backgarden which is north facing and the house blocks most of south view, maybe the full moon and house caused a shadow since the target was directly overhead for me (clutching at straws), maybe I got something wrong in stacking or processing which seems more likely. Any ideas??

[michael8554]

If you didn't use Flats then the centre bright-up is to be expected,  it's not a problem with your shooting or stacking.

Michael

[tich]

Flats would certainly help mate I didn't do any for years but now I do them it does make the data easier to work with, Background extraction using Siril helps with it though although it wont fix dust motes.

[dark knight]

Wow thnx tich, can you explain the process you used in siril as I've never used that software 

[ONIKKINEN]

The image is looking pretty good!

Tutorial on gradient removal with Siril: https://siril.org/tutorials/gradient/

I would also recommend using Siril for general processing too, not just the gradients.

an easy 4 step processing workflow to get an image 90% done would be:

1.  crop out all artifacts from stacking (funny edges and such)
2.  remove gradients with the background extraction tool. Take your time with this step, how well it goes dictates how much you can stretch the image before the background gets deepfried.
3.  Photometric colour calibration if the image is more or less a broadband image (no filter or generic light pollution filter). If not, like narrowband imaging, youll need to use the manual colour calibration tool.
4.  Stretch the image using Asinh transformation, histogram transformation or the hyperbolic doodad (or a mix of all). Easiest would be to just click the autostretch button in histogram transformation and walk back the stretch a bit (its IMO too aggressive). Try not to clip blacks more than a couple of %, it will make the image look much noisier.

All of that takes a few minutes and will get you an image that is almost finished. After that you can do finishing touches with Photoshop however you like with maybe touching up saturation, sharpening and denoising.

Plenty of folks do use photoshop for all of their processing, so its not like it cant be done, but i found it infinitely easier to work with Siril and photoshop than just photoshop when first starting processing images. But its worth it to learn at least the gradient removal tool with it anyway.

[tich]

This might help Carl as I've followed a few of his tutorials with SIRIL it's nothing like Photoshop so if that's what you're used to then it will take a while to get your head round it but it is good & free. https://siril.org/download/