M33 Triangulum reprocessed 2022 data with x suite: stunning difference

[pipnina]

When I took this image in 2022 (about 4 hours or so of data if I recall) I thought it was really good, and definitely the best I'd come out with to that point.

Having tried the x suite, I went back to older images and figured I'd see what I could do with it on my 2022 M33 attempt. After using blur-x and noise-x and working with the resulting image (all before stretching) I wound up with an image that's almost impossible to believe came from the same data set.

So here's my 2023 x suite process of my old triangulum data. Any suggestions and feedback welcome of course, but I am over the moon with the result this time around!

 

And for comparison the original 2022 process:

[Neil_104]

Wow that really is night and day. A massive improvement, especially in bringing out the faint out reaches of the galaxy. Great colours as well. What did you use to process the original 2022 version?

[pipnina]

9 minutes ago, Neil_104 said:

Wow that really is night and day. A massive improvement, especially in bringing out the faint out reaches of the galaxy. Great colours as well. What did you use to process the original 2022 version?

2022 and 2023 were processed in pixinsight, with small tweaks in RawTherapee afterwards.

I use RawTherapee for things like colour noise reduction (it has a good algorithm for it compared to pix) and tweaking certain colours. In the 2023 version for example, the pink hydrogen regions were too intense after the pixinsight colour boost, so I adjusted the image's colour in RawTherapee using the LAB colour mode to bring the nebula saturation down a bit.

The big differences here come from the x suite improving the base data and a different approach to editing the image in the first place. I used spectrophotometric colour calibration, I used a fix i found for my overcorrecting flats and that improved DBE performance. I also used curves and stretches more effectively I think too.

[Sunshine]

Wonderful result!

[tomato]

Great processing result. Are there still any X suite naysayers out there? For me the earlier version looks like the detail has been pushed harder and hence potentially more contrived, your X suite version is much more subtle. 👍

[WolfieGlos]

Wow, what a difference!