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M31 Edit Challenge , Are You Up To It ?

celestron8g8

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celestron8g8

celestron8g8

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Got a challenge for any and all here . If you are willing to take the challenge here is a M31 image i took last Friday . This is a TIF format , 1.97meg , 997x size . Not alot to go on cause this is also cropped from the original size . This is actually 1-hr 6-mins worth of exposure . Mostly at f/7.1 and ISO 1600 . Taken with an XSi and a 70-200mm f/4L Canon lens . As i said , if your willing to take a challenge and show me your editing skills then download the image and PP it however you want and repost the image here . I look forward to any and all who accept . Sorry this isn't a bigger file but i posted what i could here . BTW i thought i might better let you know what i have already done also . It's stacked in DSS , RGB aligned , Midtones , Highlights and Shadows slightly adjusted and 20% Saturation added . Cropped and resized in PS7 but no other PP done at all .

M31_Challenge_11-05-2010.tif

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pete_l

pete_l

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Yup, that's about all I can do with it, too.

m31challengeprocessed11.jpg

Briefly, Image->adjustments->levels

Work on each of the Red, Green, Blue channels in turn. Set the black point (left-most slider) just to the start of the histogram. Set the grey-point slider to the point where the histogram falls back to 0, don't touch the white-point slider.

Save

Go to curves and "boost" the low levels (around input=50, output=50) up a small amount. Go back to the separate levels and re-tweak. Crop and save.

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Cloudwatcher

Cloudwatcher

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That is one very annoying image.One can tell there is detail lurking in it but the more you try to winkle it out the worse it gets. :D

Anyhow,here,with more artefacts than the British Museum, is my lunch break effort. :p

Sorry about flipping the image but I always work on M31 that way up.:)

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teh_orph

teh_orph

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Wow, that was tricky! Here's my effort.

beforeafter.png

I can see now why people say processing M31 images can be tough. S/N ratio was a bit too low in this pic! The resolution was also a bit too low!

Balancing the colour of the background and surrounding stars was quite tough but also bringing out the galaxy from the background (whilst combating the sensor noise and enhancing the arm and dust detail) was an effort.

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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Here is mine. I cant bring myself to go so deep into the noise so I just dealt with the background in PixInsight and boosted the star colour in PS. There aint much to go on!! I did a small stretch above the background level, too, but if it is all noise I would rather leave it out.

Olly

post-15040-133877500544_thumb.jpg

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celestron8g8

celestron8g8

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Keep them coming everyone , i'm at work at the moment and i can't see anyones image . They have it restricted from certain images :) .

Iwas able to make some changes here at work and now i can see all images but one . pete_1 , i only see a box with a red X so for some reason your image isn't showing up :D . Can you repost it ? This is really neat to see everyones PP response ! They're all good , different from each other but good and i like them . Keep them coming tho for those of you who like the challenge !

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pete_l

pete_l

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pete_1 , i only see a box with a red X so for some reason your image isn't showing up :) .

Sorted. I was being lazy and just linked from my home computer. I've UL'd to a "proper" website now, so it should be visible.

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Tim

Tim

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Not being funny, but if you've done all that levels stuff in DSS, and the saturation, it's already spoiled. Those tools are just for a quick preview according to the author of DSS.

Can you not upload the autosave 32 bit file somewhere, untouched?

Cheers

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celestron8g8

celestron8g8

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Not being funny, but if you've done all that levels stuff in DSS, and the saturation, it's already spoiled. Those tools are just for a quick preview according to the author of DSS.

Can you not upload the autosave 32 bit file somewhere, untouched?

Cheers

I understand your point TJ but i didn't do enough to consider editing very much at all . What i did is align RGB so the image would show up , then i slightly adjusted one slider on the midtone to slightly darken for the image to be seen , and i did a 20% saturation just so the color could be seen but other than that i didn't do any other adjusting of anything so as spoiling it i disagree cause anything i did can easily be reversed in any editing software . I don't have a place to upload the autosave image . It's rather large and if a person could not at least see something of the image they might not even try this challenge . If you know a place i can without having to register again or pay i will consider doing that . But i'm already a member at too many places , i don't really care to join any other place at the moment .

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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Personally I like to do the entire stretch in Ps because it gives me the finest control over the shape of the curve. I've tried the PixInsight stretch but so far it is not giving me as good a result as a manually shaped curve in Ps. Indeed I quite often combine several different stretches since I get one part of the image better than another in different iterations.

One thing's for sure, though, Dynamic Background Extraction and Background Neutralization (PixInsight) are a godsend on that image with its big green square!

Olly

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teh_orph

teh_orph

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Yeah I'd love to have a go again with the original - I could tell that the 'rgb align' function had been used! Plus since the image we'd go was only 8 bits per channel, information indeed has been lost in doing initial processing!

Round two, with a fits file? :)

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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Yeah I'd love to have a go again with the original - I could tell that the 'rgb align' function had been used! Plus since the image we'd go was only 8 bits per channel, information indeed has been lost in doing initial processing!

Round two, with a fits file? :)

...and maybe a few hours more data!!

Olly

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pete_l

pete_l

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Even the first TIF image was 77-megs :) .
Does it compress? - either with gzip or into another format such as a 16 bit PNG (thought that would be a bit lossy, it's still eminently workable at a high quality setting)
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Tim

Tim

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How about drawing a rectangle round the main galaxy in DSS and just stacking that part of the interest. You can lose 10 - 30 % of the border happily without spoiling the image and the tiff will be a lot smaller.

The colour is only "missing" in the preview that DSS shows you. By increasing the saturation in DSS and then saving it, you alter that original data in an irreversible way, whereas if you work with the tiff as it comes out, you get full control of the colour and can finely adjust it, same with RGB align etc and the levels tools. Its a bit like using a screwdriver to open a can of beans, yes you can do it, but there are better tools designed for the job which give you more control, and make less of a mess :)

I'd still love to have a go with the big file that DSS spits out, just as it is, if possible :D

Olly, if you are still following the thread, in PI, see how you get on just using the Histogram adjustment tool instead of curves. If you nudge the black point up, and then bring the midpoint to the edge of the right hand bottom of the data curve a couple or three times you can get quite a nice natural looking stretch on some images, I'd be keen to hear how you get on with that. Very easy to do too :p

Cheers

TJ

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