Hi -
I'm interested in constructive criticism on this 50 hour image of the Iris Nebula. This is my first attempt at a LRGB target like the Iris with lots of dust/LBN. I'm in Bortle 4 skies with only fair seeing conditions most of the time. I found that it was challenging to draw out the dust while still keeping the nebula from being washed/blown out. I tried GSH for the first time but I need to gain a lot more experience with this tool to maximize its potential. Here's the specifics:
- Takahashi TSA120
- QHY600M with Astrodon Series II LRGB filters
- EQ6R-Pro mount
- MGEN3 autoguider/camera
- About 1500 subs - 25 hours of 120 sec Lum subs; 25 hours of 120 sec RGB subs split evenly between them; Bin 1x1
- Dither 3x
Basic PI workflow - (Some of these steps were iterative)
- WBPP w/cosmic correction
- Channel combination
- Crop
- DBE
- Color Cal
- NoiseXTerminator
- Deconvolution on Lum using strong L-mask and star mask
- Histogram/GSH
- LRGB combination
- Star, range and GAME masks used in the following steps
- StarXTerminator to separate stars from nebula
- MMT for sharpening
- Curves/Sat
- Reduce stars in starless image with StarReduction Tool
- LHE (25 and 100)
- Background Enhance
- PixelMath to recombine the starless and stars
- ICC
Thanks for your time and comments in advance!
Paul - Seattle
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I am not good enough at imaging yet to give any constructive criticism, but I will your hard work a patients really brought out the dust! This looks great. You should share in the Seattle Stellar Cartography group, where more experienced people can give you some constructive criticism.
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Thanks for your support and suggestion. I'll follow up and post it on the Seattle group, which I've done before.
Paul
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Looks great! Personally, I would have removed the stars at the linear stage, stretched them less aggressively and added them back in at the end (using a screen function). I find this gives more control over the star bloat and avoids darker centres to the stars.
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Great image, I like it.
Just a question, why did you reduce stars in the starless image (and not in the stars image) ? I don't understand.
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Hello! I think you should be less aggressive with noise reduction and sharpening of the bright filaments of the Iris. Also, I find that most of the stars lack color. Finally, a touch of contrast may be beneficial ☺️
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Excellent image, great work ! The details around the central star are rarely seen like this.
I am an amateur of stars with spikes ! So you could add some fishing nylon strings in front of your lens... Have a look here:
https://www.astrobin.com/yl3sou/
Philippe
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1st, Beautiful image! I’d be very happy with this myself! However I agree with several remarks above. Now I’m a pixel peeper so don’t take this wrong in anyway!
1) Zooming into the top right and left corners it looks like you may have a bit of camera tilt. Specifically in the top right corner, but this is very slight and as picky as I am I’d be happy with it myself! Some of my wider field (especially my older images) are not this good in that department. Again I’m a pixel peeper and I try to keep things like this to a minimum.
2a) I agree @Roger Nichol in that I’d pull stars at the linear stage and stretch them to what I’d like to see. In some cases make a couple different star layers with different stretches and play with adding them back in Pixel Math until you like what you see.
2b) I also agree @Die Launische Diva I myself like to have more colorful stars especially with your RGB data. So the way I would have done this is as follows. On your linear star image 1st stretch to your liking, do your work on the star layer that you normally do. 2nd pull luminance and minimize. 3rd then open LRGB combine and put your luminance in the L box and uncheck the RGB boxes and move your slider in the “saturation” to the left. I like to start with somewhere around 37-40 and add that back to the image an watch your stars gradually gain the color they lack. This can be done as many times as you want. I like to start with adding the 1st time at 37-40 then slowly increase (make the number larger) those numbers each time I add the luminance back to the image. 4th & optional, I have a tendency to mask the background so that when I add the luminance back to the image it only adds color to the stars and not the background. It keeps your background more natural looking. Anyway keep adding back the luminance until your happy with how much color the stars have. Once done add them back to the starless image in PM. And finally as @Die Launische Diva mentioned as well just an ever so slight adjustment in the contrast in either Gimp/PS or you could do it in Curves as well, however I think this is to personal taste as most of the final tweaks are in AP
Another note: as @Kaoru_Requiem mentioned star reduction on the “starless” image. I have to assume this was just a miss typed statement as you don’t have stars in the “starless” image. At 1st I was confused but assumed what I mentioned.
Again great job on this image along with the dedication to get 50hrs of data!
Dale
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I think your photo has great potential, 50h... really jealous about clear nights 
I've just downloaded your JPG file and started to "have fun with it" in Photoshop.
Probably I would go with something like this:
The biggest problem for me are stars. Too big, bloated, stretched too much on the beginning of the processing (I think). I tried to do something with this (StarXterminator, reduce "Star bloating" action, curves, increased colors) but I'm still not happy with the result.
The nebula/background colors I chose... well, it depends on your taste and preferences. I'm not convinced about the color of the Iris but it's hard to work on simple JPG file. To make that color I used Photoshop and Selective color, Channel Mixer, Match Color, curves and some masks. Also increased contrast a little.
Try to use NoiseXTerminator little less aggressive. I'ts OK to have some noise on your pictures but not too much. At that particular photo there is no noise at all, that's why I think you used it too aggressive.
Hope you don't mind that I modified your photo, just for fun and processing training - hope that maybe it will help you
Clear nights,
Chris
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Roger Nichol:
Looks great! Personally, I would have removed the stars at the linear stage, stretched them less aggressively and added them back in at the end (using a screen function). I find this gives more control over the star bloat and avoids darker centres to the stars.
Hi Roger -
Thanks for your reply. Your point is a good one and I've gone back and forth in my workflow using it or not. In this case, I didn't remove the stars in the linear stage but I will definitely go back and compare results. I've had issues with star bloat so that may help resolve this problem.
Paul
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Great image, I like it.
Just a question, why did you reduce stars in the starless image (and not in the stars image) ? I don't understand.
Sorry, that was a typo. I meant just the opposite - the stars image.  |
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Die Launische Diva:
Hello! I think you should be less aggressive with noise reduction and sharpening of the bright filaments of the Iris. Also, I find that most of the stars lack color. Finally, a touch of contrast may be beneficial ☺️
Thanks for your comments, Die. I've found that noise is a personal taste but I hear what you're saying. I've used fairly conservative settings in NoiseXTerminator but there's always room for improvement. I purposely tried to gently sharpen the interior of the Iris since I had so much integration time but maybe too much, IDK. Star color and contrast, I agree. I purposely over brightened the background to draw out the dust more but I think I may have overdone it although some people have liked the effect. It's probably a fine balance that I need to work on more.
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Philippe Barraud:
Excellent image, great work ! The details around the central star are rarely seen like this.
I am an amateur of stars with spikes ! So you could add some fishing nylon strings in front of your lens... Have a look here:
https://www.astrobin.com/yl3sou/
Philippe
Hi Phiippe -
Thanks much for your response. It's interesting to see people's comments about images. So much personal taste and preferences, right? I liked the detail in the core for the same reason you said, which might not have been possible with significantly less integration time. Did I oversharpen - maybe. Spikes are another area that boils down to personal preference. I could artificially create spikes and have in the past, but chose not to in this case.
Paul
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Dale Penkala:
1st, Beautiful image! I’d be very happy with this myself! However I agree with several remarks above. Now I’m a pixel peeper so don’t take this wrong in anyway!
1) Zooming into the top right and left corners it looks like you may have a bit of camera tilt. Specifically in the top right corner, but this is very slight and as picky as I am I’d be happy with it myself! Some of my wider field (especially my older images) are not this good in that department. Again I’m a pixel peeper and I try to keep things like this to a minimum.
2a) I agree @Roger Nichol in that I’d pull stars at the linear stage and stretch them to what I’d like to see. In some cases make a couple different star layers with different stretches and play with adding them back in Pixel Math until you like what you see.
2b) I also agree @Die Launische Diva I myself like to have more colorful stars especially with your RGB data. So the way I would have done this is as follows. On your linear star image 1st stretch to your liking, do your work on the star layer that you normally do. 2nd pull luminance and minimize. 3rd then open LRGB combine and put your luminance in the L box and uncheck the RGB boxes and move your slider in the “saturation” to the left. I like to start with somewhere around 37-40 and add that back to the image an watch your stars gradually gain the color they lack. This can be done as many times as you want. I like to start with adding the 1st time at 37-40 then slowly increase (make the number larger) those numbers each time I add the luminance back to the image. 4th & optional, I have a tendency to mask the background so that when I add the luminance back to the image it only adds color to the stars and not the background. It keeps your background more natural looking. Anyway keep adding back the luminance until your happy with how much color the stars have. Once done add them back to the starless image in PM. And finally as @Die Launische Diva mentioned as well just an ever so slight adjustment in the contrast in either Gimp/PS or you could do it in Curves as well, however I think this is to personal taste as most of the final tweaks are in AP
Another note: as @Kaoru_Requiem mentioned star reduction on the “starless” image. I have to assume this was just a miss typed statement as you don’t have stars in the “starless” image. At 1st I was confused but assumed what I mentioned.
Again great job on this image along with the dedication to get 50hrs of data!
Dale
Hi Dale -
I really appreciate your thoughtful suggestions and comments. Regarding tilt, yes, I've got tilt that I've been trying to correct for years without any success. I even recently purchased a Neumann tilt corrector and spent 10-15 hours on it and got absolutely nowhere so I've given up for now. The downside is the problem you point out.
Thanks for your detailed walk-through about stars. I'm generally not happy with my star color so I'll give your workflow a try as I continue to work on this project and see what I get. I'm always looking for improvements in my workflow and final results, which usually means there is a million ways to do things in PI! Like you, I tend to use a combination of different previews, clones, stretches and masks to experiment around and it's been very helpful. I have not tried pulling luminance during this stage so I'll definitely give that a try. The one exception is using the sliders in LRGB combine. I've taken several tutoring sessions with Warren Keller and he's told me emphatically not to touch the lightness and saturation sliders. Before my sessions with him, I did play around with the sliders. I'm not sure what the answer is but will continue looking at the options.
I agree about contrast. I want more but floated this image out since it's not finalized yet to see what other people thought too. It's important to draw out the dust without sacrificing contrast. I generally shoot for about .10 background and the small area that isn't overwhelmed by dust at 4 o'clock in the image is about .11 so it's close. In this case, I'll probably bring that number down given the image.
Finally, yes, you're right about star reduction in the starless image. That would be a trick, wouldn't it? 
Paul
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Paul O’Brien:
Dale Penkala:
1st, Beautiful image! I’d be very happy with this myself! However I agree with several remarks above. Now I’m a pixel peeper so don’t take this wrong in anyway!
1) Zooming into the top right and left corners it looks like you may have a bit of camera tilt. Specifically in the top right corner, but this is very slight and as picky as I am I’d be happy with it myself! Some of my wider field (especially my older images) are not this good in that department. Again I’m a pixel peeper and I try to keep things like this to a minimum.
2a) I agree @Roger Nichol in that I’d pull stars at the linear stage and stretch them to what I’d like to see. In some cases make a couple different star layers with different stretches and play with adding them back in Pixel Math until you like what you see.
2b) I also agree @Die Launische Diva I myself like to have more colorful stars especially with your RGB data. So the way I would have done this is as follows. On your linear star image 1st stretch to your liking, do your work on the star layer that you normally do. 2nd pull luminance and minimize. 3rd then open LRGB combine and put your luminance in the L box and uncheck the RGB boxes and move your slider in the “saturation” to the left. I like to start with somewhere around 37-40 and add that back to the image an watch your stars gradually gain the color they lack. This can be done as many times as you want. I like to start with adding the 1st time at 37-40 then slowly increase (make the number larger) those numbers each time I add the luminance back to the image. 4th & optional, I have a tendency to mask the background so that when I add the luminance back to the image it only adds color to the stars and not the background. It keeps your background more natural looking. Anyway keep adding back the luminance until your happy with how much color the stars have. Once done add them back to the starless image in PM. And finally as @Die Launische Diva mentioned as well just an ever so slight adjustment in the contrast in either Gimp/PS or you could do it in Curves as well, however I think this is to personal taste as most of the final tweaks are in AP
Another note: as @Kaoru_Requiem mentioned star reduction on the “starless” image. I have to assume this was just a miss typed statement as you don’t have stars in the “starless” image. At 1st I was confused but assumed what I mentioned.
Again great job on this image along with the dedication to get 50hrs of data!
Dale
Hi Dale -
I really appreciate your thoughtful suggestions and comments. Regarding tilt, yes, I've got tilt that I've been trying to correct for years without any success. I even recently purchased a Neumann tilt corrector and spent 10-15 hours on it and got absolutely nowhere so I've given up for now. The downside is the problem you point out.
Thanks for your detailed walk-through about stars. I'm generally not happy with my star color so I'll give your workflow a try as I continue to work on this project and see what I get. I'm always looking for improvements in my workflow and final results, which usually means there is a million ways to do things in PI! Like you, I tend to use a combination of different previews, clones, stretches and masks to experiment around and it's been very helpful. I have not tried pulling luminance during this stage so I'll definitely give that a try. The one exception is using the sliders in LRGB combine. I've taken several tutoring sessions with Warren Keller and he's told me emphatically not to touch the lightness and saturation sliders. Before my sessions with him, I did play around with the sliders. I'm not sure what the answer is but will continue looking at the options.
I agree about contrast. I want more but floated this image out since it's not finalized yet to see what other people thought too. It's important to draw out the dust without sacrificing contrast. I generally shoot for about .10 background and the small area that isn't overwhelmed by dust at 4 o'clock in the image is about .11 so it's close. In this case, I'll probably bring that number down given the image.
Finally, yes, you're right about star reduction in the starless image. That would be a trick, wouldn't it?
Paul
Hi Paul,
I’m curious about why he doesn’t recommend the saturation adjustment. Maybe he was referring to nebulosity and not just a star layer. No idea.
I’m honestly jealous of the 50hrs integration time! If your willing I’d love to play with your original integrated image just for fun! It’s been nothing but clouds here for the last couple of weeks and I’d love to play with an image. Direct message me if your willing, if not thats fine too.
Dale
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Krzysztof Gaudy:
I think your photo has great potential, 50h... really jealous about clear nights
I've just downloaded your JPG file and started to "have fun with it" in Photoshop.
Probably I would go with something like this:
The biggest problem for me are stars. Too big, bloated, stretched too much on the beginning of the processing (I think). I tried to do something with this (StarXterminator, reduce "Star bloating" action, curves, increased colors) but I'm still not happy with the result.
The nebula/background colors I chose... well, it depends on your taste and preferences. I'm not convinced about the color of the Iris but it's hard to work on simple JPG file. To make that color I used Photoshop and Selective color, Channel Mixer, Match Color, curves and some masks. Also increased contrast a little.
Try to use NoiseXTerminator little less aggressive. I'ts OK to have some noise on your pictures but not too much. At that particular photo there is no noise at all, that's why I think you used it too aggressive.
Hope you don't mind that I modified your photo, just for fun and processing training - hope that maybe it will help you
Clear nights,
Chris
Thanks for your input and nebula revisions, Chris, and no, I welcome any and all comments and image manipulations! Although I've used PS in the past, I'm now exclusively using PI. I agree with you and others that I'm stretching the stars too much so that is something I'll work on with your and others suggestions. Speaking of which, where is the "Star Bloating" action? I'm not familiar with it. Nebula colors - that's the beauty of artistic license cuz who knows what it "really" looks like, right? I toned down the color sat some but it still needs work. I'm finding dust presents new challenges in an already challenging processing workflow. I probably leave too "clean" an image but it's interesting to look back at the IMOD picks and compare noise in the images. Some yes, some basically none.
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Dale Penkala:
Paul O’Brien:
Dale Penkala:
1st, Beautiful image! I’d be very happy with this myself! However I agree with several remarks above. Now I’m a pixel peeper so don’t take this wrong in anyway!
1) Zooming into the top right and left corners it looks like you may have a bit of camera tilt. Specifically in the top right corner, but this is very slight and as picky as I am I’d be happy with it myself! Some of my wider field (especially my older images) are not this good in that department. Again I’m a pixel peeper and I try to keep things like this to a minimum.
2a) I agree @Roger Nichol in that I’d pull stars at the linear stage and stretch them to what I’d like to see. In some cases make a couple different star layers with different stretches and play with adding them back in Pixel Math until you like what you see.
2b) I also agree @Die Launische Diva I myself like to have more colorful stars especially with your RGB data. So the way I would have done this is as follows. On your linear star image 1st stretch to your liking, do your work on the star layer that you normally do. 2nd pull luminance and minimize. 3rd then open LRGB combine and put your luminance in the L box and uncheck the RGB boxes and move your slider in the “saturation” to the left. I like to start with somewhere around 37-40 and add that back to the image an watch your stars gradually gain the color they lack. This can be done as many times as you want. I like to start with adding the 1st time at 37-40 then slowly increase (make the number larger) those numbers each time I add the luminance back to the image. 4th & optional, I have a tendency to mask the background so that when I add the luminance back to the image it only adds color to the stars and not the background. It keeps your background more natural looking. Anyway keep adding back the luminance until your happy with how much color the stars have. Once done add them back to the starless image in PM. And finally as @Die Launische Diva mentioned as well just an ever so slight adjustment in the contrast in either Gimp/PS or you could do it in Curves as well, however I think this is to personal taste as most of the final tweaks are in AP
Another note: as @Kaoru_Requiem mentioned star reduction on the “starless” image. I have to assume this was just a miss typed statement as you don’t have stars in the “starless” image. At 1st I was confused but assumed what I mentioned.
Again great job on this image along with the dedication to get 50hrs of data!
Dale
Hi Dale -
I really appreciate your thoughtful suggestions and comments. Regarding tilt, yes, I've got tilt that I've been trying to correct for years without any success. I even recently purchased a Neumann tilt corrector and spent 10-15 hours on it and got absolutely nowhere so I've given up for now. The downside is the problem you point out.
Thanks for your detailed walk-through about stars. I'm generally not happy with my star color so I'll give your workflow a try as I continue to work on this project and see what I get. I'm always looking for improvements in my workflow and final results, which usually means there is a million ways to do things in PI! Like you, I tend to use a combination of different previews, clones, stretches and masks to experiment around and it's been very helpful. I have not tried pulling luminance during this stage so I'll definitely give that a try. The one exception is using the sliders in LRGB combine. I've taken several tutoring sessions with Warren Keller and he's told me emphatically not to touch the lightness and saturation sliders. Before my sessions with him, I did play around with the sliders. I'm not sure what the answer is but will continue looking at the options.
I agree about contrast. I want more but floated this image out since it's not finalized yet to see what other people thought too. It's important to draw out the dust without sacrificing contrast. I generally shoot for about .10 background and the small area that isn't overwhelmed by dust at 4 o'clock in the image is about .11 so it's close. In this case, I'll probably bring that number down given the image.
Finally, yes, you're right about star reduction in the starless image. That would be a trick, wouldn't it?
Paul
Hi Paul,
I’m curious about why he doesn’t recommend the saturation adjustment. Maybe he was referring to nebulosity and not just a star layer. No idea.
I’m honestly jealous of the 50hrs integration time! If your willing I’d love to play with your original integrated image just for fun! It’s been nothing but clouds here for the last couple of weeks and I’d love to play with an image. Direct message me if your willing, if not thats fine too.
Dale
Hi Dale -
You raise a good point. I can't really offer much of an explanation other than his reaction to me when we got to the LRGB combination stage. At that point, we were only working with the two L and RGB images. If I had done your workflow regarding stars, maybe he wouldn't have any objections. At any rate, I'm going to try your method. As an aside, I've also done quite a bit of tutoring with Ron Brecher and he and Warren have a little different approach and styles although both are excellent instructors that I highly recommend. I'll PM you with masters if you'd like. Stay tuned! Thanks.
Paul
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I'm gonna poke my head in here just to say I'm in the same exact boat as you. I have about 30 hours right now of color and I'm building into a ton of luminance. Mine looks almost identical to yours. I'm having one hell of a time bringing out the dust lanes, much less background extract. My technique is to combine the RGB and then process the luminance layer seperately. The colors are in the RGB, but the details are in the luminance. I use a similar technique for all my narrowband using Ha as luminance. I'm around 100x300s luminance right now. My color data is much much longer subs, which was more a trial and error for me. Also, if you use range selection and just mask the center off, you can keep stretching the lanes out without messing up the core.
Anyways, I just wanna see what others have to say, and more or less subscribe to this thread Good luck with yours.
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Paul O’Brien:
Dale Penkala:
Paul O’Brien:
Dale Penkala:
1st, Beautiful image! I’d be very happy with this myself! However I agree with several remarks above. Now I’m a pixel peeper so don’t take this wrong in anyway!
1) Zooming into the top right and left corners it looks like you may have a bit of camera tilt. Specifically in the top right corner, but this is very slight and as picky as I am I’d be happy with it myself! Some of my wider field (especially my older images) are not this good in that department. Again I’m a pixel peeper and I try to keep things like this to a minimum.
2a) I agree @Roger Nichol in that I’d pull stars at the linear stage and stretch them to what I’d like to see. In some cases make a couple different star layers with different stretches and play with adding them back in Pixel Math until you like what you see.
2b) I also agree @Die Launische Diva I myself like to have more colorful stars especially with your RGB data. So the way I would have done this is as follows. On your linear star image 1st stretch to your liking, do your work on the star layer that you normally do. 2nd pull luminance and minimize. 3rd then open LRGB combine and put your luminance in the L box and uncheck the RGB boxes and move your slider in the “saturation” to the left. I like to start with somewhere around 37-40 and add that back to the image an watch your stars gradually gain the color they lack. This can be done as many times as you want. I like to start with adding the 1st time at 37-40 then slowly increase (make the number larger) those numbers each time I add the luminance back to the image. 4th & optional, I have a tendency to mask the background so that when I add the luminance back to the image it only adds color to the stars and not the background. It keeps your background more natural looking. Anyway keep adding back the luminance until your happy with how much color the stars have. Once done add them back to the starless image in PM. And finally as @Die Launische Diva mentioned as well just an ever so slight adjustment in the contrast in either Gimp/PS or you could do it in Curves as well, however I think this is to personal taste as most of the final tweaks are in AP
Another note: as @Kaoru_Requiem mentioned star reduction on the “starless” image. I have to assume this was just a miss typed statement as you don’t have stars in the “starless” image. At 1st I was confused but assumed what I mentioned.
Again great job on this image along with the dedication to get 50hrs of data!
Dale
Hi Dale -
I really appreciate your thoughtful suggestions and comments. Regarding tilt, yes, I've got tilt that I've been trying to correct for years without any success. I even recently purchased a Neumann tilt corrector and spent 10-15 hours on it and got absolutely nowhere so I've given up for now. The downside is the problem you point out.
Thanks for your detailed walk-through about stars. I'm generally not happy with my star color so I'll give your workflow a try as I continue to work on this project and see what I get. I'm always looking for improvements in my workflow and final results, which usually means there is a million ways to do things in PI! Like you, I tend to use a combination of different previews, clones, stretches and masks to experiment around and it's been very helpful. I have not tried pulling luminance during this stage so I'll definitely give that a try. The one exception is using the sliders in LRGB combine. I've taken several tutoring sessions with Warren Keller and he's told me emphatically not to touch the lightness and saturation sliders. Before my sessions with him, I did play around with the sliders. I'm not sure what the answer is but will continue looking at the options.
I agree about contrast. I want more but floated this image out since it's not finalized yet to see what other people thought too. It's important to draw out the dust without sacrificing contrast. I generally shoot for about .10 background and the small area that isn't overwhelmed by dust at 4 o'clock in the image is about .11 so it's close. In this case, I'll probably bring that number down given the image.
Finally, yes, you're right about star reduction in the starless image. That would be a trick, wouldn't it?
Paul
Hi Paul,
I’m curious about why he doesn’t recommend the saturation adjustment. Maybe he was referring to nebulosity and not just a star layer. No idea.
I’m honestly jealous of the 50hrs integration time! If your willing I’d love to play with your original integrated image just for fun! It’s been nothing but clouds here for the last couple of weeks and I’d love to play with an image. Direct message me if your willing, if not thats fine too.
Dale
Hi Dale -
You raise a good point. I can't really offer much of an explanation other than his reaction to me when we got to the LRGB combination stage. At that point, we were only working with the two L and RGB images. If I had done your workflow regarding stars, maybe he wouldn't have any objections. At any rate, I'm going to try your method. As an aside, I've also done quite a bit of tutoring with Ron Brecher and he and Warren have a little different approach and styles although both are excellent instructors that I highly recommend. I'll PM you with masters if you'd like. Stay tuned! Thanks.
Paul
Sounds good Paul, and will do! I look forward to working with your data!
Dale
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