Andromeda before and after

[bomberbaz]

Hello everyone.  Below are a rough and a more polished version of Andromeda.  I had been looking for a filter programme to run alongside Gimp and @vlaiv pointed me in the direction of G'MIC, can't thank him enough for that, it's a cracking programme. 

I ran the "more polished" version through a range of 7 different image alterations to get here using Gimp, Py-astro and G'MIC. (Have to say it is so much easier have all the add ons under one base programme)

Anyway I would appreciate any feedback on the two efforts.

[AstroMuni]

Great image Steve! Love it. You can also see NGC206 quite clearly. I esp like how you managed to reduce the stars to bring out the galaxy.

What are the tools that you used in py-astro & G'MiC?

I had a go at processing your first image in Siril and couldnt reduce the stars 😞

 

 

 

Edited October 27, 2022 by AstroMuni

[bomberbaz]

5 hours ago, AstroMuni said:

Great image Steve! Love it. You can also see NGC206 quite clearly. I esp like how you managed to reduce the stars to bring out the galaxy.

What are the tools that you used in py-astro & G'MiC?

I had a go at processing your first image in Siril and couldnt reduce the stars 😞

 

 

 

Hello mate and thanks for the reply. I will give you a quick run down of the process I used. I am not saying this is the right process, just that it worked for me with the above image.

I would just play around with the strength of the application and see what works with you. 

Pyastro – layer tools, scale brightness of all layers 

Gimp - Colours -  saturation

Gimp - Colors – levels – increase darkness

G’mic repair – smooth mean curvature to reduce stars

G’mic repair -  smooth median

Pyastro – sharpen – smart sharpen

G’mic – repair – smooth wavelets

Pyastro – sharpen – high pass filter

I know thgis is 8 and not 7, I forgot to take account of the levels/darkness in gimp which I assumed was a given. I may have also used "Gimp - colours – exposure - black level" but not sure if I did or not.

Anyway, I feel I have only scratched the surface with G'mic but I am getting to grips with pyastro. Both are great tools.

cheers

steve

Edited October 27, 2022 by bomberbaz

[AstroMuni]

12 hours ago, bomberbaz said:

I would just play around with the strength of the application and see what works with you. 

Thanks. I had installed py-astro in the past and then didnt find it quite as useful, hence deleted it. Perhaps a revisit is needed. You might wish to have a go with Starnet++ as well to help with star reduction and then layer with original in Gimp. May give better control over stars. This is what I get when I apply it to your image (the version I edited in Siril)

[bomberbaz]

1 hour ago, AstroMuni said:

Thanks. I had installed py-astro in the past and then didnt find it quite as useful, hence deleted it. Perhaps a revisit is needed. You might wish to have a go with Starnet++ as well to help with star reduction and then layer with original in Gimp. May give better control over stars. This is what I get when I apply it to your image (the version I edited in Siril)

I do have starnett++ but have found it left artefacts behind on images after star removal.

However I have tried it on the andromeda image, worth a try for playing around with.

cheers

steve

[bomberbaz]

2 hours ago, AstroMuni said:

Thanks. I had installed py-astro in the past and then didnt find it quite as useful, hence deleted it. Perhaps a revisit is needed. You might wish to have a go with Starnet++ as well to help with star reduction and then layer with original in Gimp. May give better control over stars. This is what I get when I apply it to your image (the version I edited in Siril)

 

Further to previous reply I did try running the image through starnett and it worked fine!  However, it is a reinstall so maybe the previous version had a glitch in it or perhaps other images I tried were just not compatible with it.

Whatever it was, the programme has worked so will reserve it's functionality for suitable data. (I am still quite pleased with my results without using it.)

cheers

steve