M45 Processing Help Needed

[ollypenrice]

Firstly the original image is good. It really is.

You have not missed much nebulosity, believe me. I would give it a tweak on the blue. Curves, blue channel, pin the background sky level and then lift it just a little above that. It might get the blue to shine.

Try unsharp mask only on the brighter parts of the image and aim to do this in a layer so you can select only the improved parts.

The key stars could be individually processed inside large well feathered circular marquees. Just try curves to bring down the haloes without creating boundaries.

I like the image, as I said. BTW There are some very faint reds lying just above the background sky level. You could use curves again to see if you have them.

Olly

[ashworthacca]

Thanks Olly.

I understand everything that you say about how to make it better and I'm sure someone with a little more Photoshop skills could make an improvement.....but you wouldn't believe the hours I've put in over the weekend and it ended up where even the smallest of adjustments were increasing the noise tenfold. I can see the reds but that red channel is probably the biggest problem with this whole image.

The link is still up if you fancy a play.

Thanks again Olly, appreciated.

[ollypenrice]

Here is my go, temporarily hosed on my gallery to show it a little bigger if that is okay. I have hardly touched the vignetting because on this image flats are vital. So much lies within the vignetted range of pixel values, so you can't easily tell data from vignette.

Levels, curves, colour balance, selective noise removal and contrast boost in a and b channels in lab colour mode. (Thanks to Martin B for that one.) USM where strong enough signal and individual curves on brighter stars. Adjustment to blue in Selective colour. NeatImage.

Olly

[ashworthacca]

That's cracking Olly:icon_salut:

Here's me blaming the data when all along it was my processing skills sadly lacking.

I'm really interested in the contrast boost in a and b channels in lab colour mode....can anyone point me to a tutorial or give me a pointer on how to do this?

The Christmas break is coming up so I'll have plenty of time to revisit this and hopefully end of with something near the quality of Olly's.

Merry Christmas:)

[ollypenrice]

Do it like this;

Convert to Lab colour in Image-Mode.

In channels, split channels.

For a and b channels go Image-Adjust-Brightness and Contrast and up the contrast by 20 or 30.

Channels - Merge Channels - (lab colour lightness-a-

Reconvert to RGB mode in Image-Mode.

If the effect is too strong paste it onto the original and adjust opacity in Layers, blend mode normal.

There was no need to clip back the data so hard. You can apply noise reduction quite liberally to background sky. Just use colour select tool to select the dark stuff.

Olly

[ashworthacca]

Thanks again Olly.....as you can tell I'm relatively new to all this imaging lark:o but I'll give it a go over the Christmas period.

[ollypenrice]

It's a form of madness. Get out while you can!!

Have a good Christmas.

Olly

[ashworthacca]

It's a form of madness. Get out while you can!!

Have a good Christmas.

Olly

Same to you Olly. All the best.