M31 Edit Challenge , Are You Up To It ?

[celestron8g8]

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

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

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?

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)

16-bit PNG would do - that's lossless, right? Or at least crop out all the boring stuff if there's more stuff in the shot?

Ok everyone if you wish to give it another try then download a 118-meg file here : Free File Hosting, Free Video Hosting, Online File Hosting. Large Files and Images up to 5GB - YourFileLink.com

NovaTJ turned me onto this website . BTW i have 15 days and if it has not been downloaded any they will auto delete the file .

[mike_777]

Here is my attempt. It is the best I could do with the data available.

thanks

Mike

[kookoo_gr]

here are mine. the original photo u posted plus a cropped from the 118mb file. my opinion each frame should have longer exposure

[NovaTJ]

Ron...this is my attempt.

Greg

[martin_h]

Here's my effort.

[Tim]

I like that one Martin. Downloading now Cheers

[celestron8g8]

Ron...this is my attempt.

Greg

Here's my effort.

Like them both ! You both did a great job ! Way better than the one i did .

[Tim]

That isn't too bad a set of data at all.

Here's my attempt. I have tried to retain the star colours whilst eliminating the various background gradients. There is a slight red banding issue I didn't get time to look at.

I used Pixinsight to do the background and the stretch, then Noels tools in PS to do the star colour.

Hope you like it

Click the crop version for link to full size jpeg! Again, the 15 day rule applies.

[Tim]

I'll add the full version here too, for the future reference, even though the forum software will butcher it

[celestron8g8]

WOW TJ , you really did a great job ! Love the background and star colors , wow !

I downloaded the large image and when it resizes on my 19" wide screen it looks great !

[Tim]

And even the large image is compressed to jpeg dont forget

[celestron8g8]

Yep i know , got em' all .

[teh_orph]

Wow TJ, good job! I'm gonna have to d/l that newer pic and have a go myself now

[namreg]

I can't open this image. I've got 2 gig of RAM on my system and it's tells me I don't have enough RAM, even after hiking up the available RAM under preferences. How much RAM do you need to open this image for crissake?

[namreg]

Managed to open it in PixInSight and save as 16bit. Here's my effort. It's clipped, but hey....

[celestron8g8]

I can't open this image. I've got 2 gig of RAM on my system and it's tells me I don't have enough RAM, even after hiking up the available RAM under preferences. How much RAM do you need to open this image for crissake?

With 2-gig ram you shouldn't have had any trouble , it's only a 118-meg file . I use DPP and PS7 and DSS to open them .

[namreg]

Yes - strange. I've since restored PS to factory defaults so think I'll have another go later. Unless it's this blumming laptop of course. I hate computers!

[astrokat]

i couldn help myself lol