I am finally getting around to some processing now that I have my Altwork station that lets me work for hours despite back issues. This is SH2-132 from last summer. FSQ and an HaRGB with a technique that I am still working on.
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That’s impressive - did you remove the stars first before processing the nebulosity and then add them in later on?
Yes, that is what I did. Separate RGB for the stars.
That has always been my nemesis. I can take the small ones out with MorphTrans but the big ones get me every time.
I too have not had much luck removing stars, especially large ones, in PI. Basically, I make three clean images in PI and then take them into Photoshop. The first is the narrowband image, in this case Ha, the second is a version of the RGB stretched to just show stars and little or no nebulosity, the third is the RGB stretched to show the nebulosity.
I remove the stars in PS using Annie’s actions large image star removal. It has been amazing on the narrowband image but not all that great on the RGB. Typically I need to use clone tool and patch tool to remove star remnants from the RGB nebulosity image - since it is blurred afterward anyway, and the stars are coming from the RGB star image, that does not degrade things much.
Then I layer the three versions in PS and use blend modes and adjustment layers to tweak to taste.
Bottom line is that PI is great but the authors’ “scientific outlook” is somewhat misguided for esthetic images, IMHO. There are times when there is no good substitute for the human judgement and intervention that PS allows.
That target is on my board as the next target to shoot. Now that I see what you have produced I cannot wait to shoot it. That’s beautiful. It looks like a big rose to me.
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