M101 reprocess

[MartinB]

This is a reworking of data collected at Les Granges using Olly's TEC 140 and my QSI 532. The suppose the moral is not to post in haste. I have tried to make the galaxy a bit more vibrant and pull out the outer arms a bit more. It's tricky because if you over do it the whole thing looks unpleasant and you loose contrast. You also need a well calibrated monitor which I hope mine is.

I would be grateful for any feed back. There are a lot of subjective choices to be made when processing and a bit of guidance is always helpful. I've tweaked the stars a little. Other than a couple of big bloated ones all that has been done is a 1 pixel minimum filter faded to 40% and a 0.8 pixel unsharp mask using a 2 pixel threshold ie hardly any sharpening. Then a small (+12) saturation boost.

I've posted the lower one beneath for comparison

[kris h]

Hi martin

Not knowing anything about astrophotography i think they look

really good the top one the best .

thanks for posting them

kris h

[Paxo]

A big difference and improvement Martin (not that the original was in any way a bad un), but as you say more vibrant and I'm not getting as much noise in the background.

Steve..

[peter shah]

Difficult to call IMO, the top certainly has more of the faint arms showing and has more vibrance and you have got rid of the slight green cast towards the centre of the galaxy.... but the stars look tighter in the lower one and the detail seems more natural

having said that i would be please with either.....top one has the edge for definate

[Psychobilly]

Close call but I personally prefer the bottom one... but both excellent

[MikeD]

They are both great results Martin, as is the top image gets my vote.

Top one has much nicer depth in both the outer galaxy detail and star field but (on my screen) is a little magenta.

I like the dust detail in the core on the bottom edit.

I would tweak the overall colour balance in the top image fix the core's green colour cast on the bottom and then add that core detail to the top image as a masked layer set to somethig like 50-70% opacity.

Had a quick play as above, hope you dont mind.

Mike.

[MrJulius]

Mesmerizing M101! The reprocessed image looks way better, gone is the green hue. At least on my monitor which unfortunately isn't calibrated very well.

[Coco]

Fantastic images ... No2 for me, I prefer a charcoal coloured deep space ..

Guy

[MartinB]

Thanks a lot everyone for the helpful comments.

I agree Mike, in getting rid of the green cast I dropped the overall green a little and then selectively dropped the localised green cast. This gave the slight magenta cast to the outer areas which you've corrected nicely.

So a few tweaks to make and then leave it well alone!

[RobH]

The background and starfield looks better in the reprocess Martin, and the whole image has more vibrancy, but the galaxy itself looks a bit too pushed to me. There is some lovely natural looking detail and delicate colour in your first process which has been lost a bit in the reprocess.

Both very good though

Cheers

Rob

[Ant]

I'd be over the moon with either Martin.

But I prefer the lower of the two... Whilst there is more galaxy in the top one, there is also a lightness around the brighter stars.

Having said that on my work laptop screen, I cannot see a green or magenta tinge on either...

Ant

[SkyHermit]

There is obviously an art to really appreciating these images. I'm afraid my expertise parallels my ability in wine-tasting. I drink it and think, mmmh I like that. So M101, mmmh thanks I like that!

[ollypenrice]

I like the more vibrant galaxy in the reprocess. Interestingly I went through a similar process with my own version from the same scope. However, what I failed to do in going after the faint outer arms was keep your good contrast within the main part of the spiral. I ended up with a rather solid-looking disc.

Olly

[jgs001]

They both look great Martin, personally, I think the top one is the better of the two, and I wish I could get mine looking like that.

[MartinB]

Great stuff, I'll try let through more of the detail from the bottom image whilst keeping the highlights of the top one. More layer masking for me this week end!