IC405 - Now with a touch of colour WIP

[Tim]

The unthinkable happened, a clear night with no moon! Took my chance and grabbed a load of blue and green subs to go with my Ha data on this target, along with a few more 20 min subs in HA. The following night I just managed to grab 6 x 6mins Red to test the effect.

This is very much a work in progress, needs loads more Ha, and Red data at least, and I might add a few more 10 min blue subs in.

I haven't done much in the way of Ha + RGB so would be keen to hear opinions on colour balance etc. For this quick test image I used HaGB for one merge, then RGB + Ha as luminance, then merged the two. Is there a standard method of achieving a result? With the mix of false and true colour it gets a bit mind boggling

Thanks for looking.

Tim

[MartinB]

Lovely work on the blue Really does look smokey. It's a bit green in the bottom corner. I've seen lots of methods for combining the RGB and Ha I only know what works for me but judging from this you are getting something right.

MB method. Process and RGB, leave a pedestal to the left of the histogram. Duplicate and blend with soft light. Add an Ha colour layer - about 85% red 15% blue and blend mode lighten. Process a grey scale Ha. Normally this would do as the luminence but in this case do a grey scale blue as well and layer the blue on top. Use lighten and levels to add the blue reflection detail. Flatten and add this as a luminosity layer.

Tweak the opacity of the RGB soft light blend to suite. The Ha colour will need a tweak with levels to take out the red back ground but preserve the red detail. The luminence will need the opacity dropping down to suit, probably around 70%.

As I say, I love that blue!

[Whippy]

IMO Tim, I think you've over cooked it on the colour a bit there. I think the Blue reflection looks a bit purple to my eyes and maybe a bit of over saturation? FWIW, I did the Jellyfish neb ages ago unsing the same type of data and got that greeny shades you have in the bottom left of your image. IIRC, I ended up giving the data to Martin who did a much better job of processing that I did at the time.

Tony..

[Boren]

Good God - what a good job!!

In my opinion - you do not need any further data in this image. You got it all.

From here it's all processing.

The touches I'd recommmend you consider:

- Pick the brightest point in each color - and push it up a little bit (while masking the stars)

- Make a luminance mask - and push up luminosity (while masking the stars)

- Using the same mask - push up saturation a little (while masking the stars)

- Take down the slight noise in the darker areas

- Make an inverse mask for the stars - and push their lum and sat a little to bring out the colors

Look, this is a AAA image as it is - it is virtually 3D already.

It can only get super AAA from here.

Cheers,

Harel

[Tim]

Thanks Martin & Tony, i'll have a look at that method I really want the final result with the blue to not look slapped on, as it often can, rather to show where it is reflecting off the clouds. I didn't bother removing gradients or backgrounds for this quick test, so hopefully on the full version the green corner wont be there.

Harel, thank you, but the red data at least and the Ha need plenty more time Those tasks you recommend will be a breeze in Pixinsight though.

Looks like there might be a clear spell tonight, i'll try and grab the rest of the red if so, and as much Ha as possible. At 20mins per sub, it takes a loooong time to get a decent number to get the noise down!

I would be interested to see a decent reference picture if anybody can recommend one, he best I have found so far is Rob Gendlers APOD from 2005 or so.

Cheers

Tim

[peter shah]

Over all colour is good but as mentioned it has a gradient that needs sorting toward the lower left corner....star colour is and detail is good ...a really nice shot....im glad you got some red frames too...its very tempting to use the Ha as the red channel, in my experience doing this you get bad star colour due to the size of the stars in the Ha and trying to correct for it is very difficult.

[steppenwolf]

This is looking good, Tim - good detail coming through

[Sierra Golf Mike]

Tim,

That looks superb, the colours are wonderful and great detail. Well done.

Steve

[Steve 1962]

I think that's a beautiful shot

[dc509]

really pretty shot..

d

[Taff]

Hi Tim' That's a realy nice capture with you' great colour.Mark