A prominent feature of NGC 7000 (North America Nebula)
Imaged over 2 nights in my backyard in Portland Oregon and at Stub Stewart state park, Oregon.
Specific Feedback Requested
If anyone is interested in Astrophotography and has a comment on the processing I would like to hear it.
This is in SHO colors, shot in RGB.
Technical Details
Asi533 camera with with Williams 81 telescope with Radian quad filter
1220mm equiv.
31-10 minute frames stacked in Astropixel.
PP in Capture one, Pixinsight, Affinity photo, Photoshop
Very nice to be able to capture scenes such as this, but I’m curious as to the mixed processing. PixInsight is designed to be the complete pro-grade workflow.
Pixinsight does some things well and I use it for star removal and channel mixing but it is not a one step processing program at least for me…
Capture is the best Raw processor, I use Affinity for Noise reduction (Pixinsight is bad at it),
I use PS for color adjustments and a Star processing plugin. Again, Pixinsight star removal plug is great, its star adjustments are not great…
PS also has the Healing brush, Pixinsight has nothing like that.
Pixinsight is just a $250 program, Some use it exclusively but not many…
Here is the workflow for an Astrobin Image of the Day.
Imaging Telescopes Or Lenses
Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED
Imaging Cameras
ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
Mounts
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Filters
Astronomik OIII 6nm 36mm · Astronomik Ha 6nm 36mm · Astronomik Deep Sky B 36mm ·Astronomik Deep Sky G 36mm · Astronomik Deep Sky R 36mm · Astronomik SII 6nm 36mm
I don’t think Photoshop is the “photoshop” of processing for most anymore except for the plug ins like Topaz and others.
I personally don’t know any photographers that just use Photoshop anymore.
Topaz is now getting good competition from NoiseXTeminator for noise reduction.
The best software these days is coming from Niche makers.
Would be a good topic for people to give their opinions on what software they are using and why they use them.
Very dramatic, Dan. For me the drama is in that channel of blue coming in from the left. I hope you don’t mind my fiddling with it just to play. I cropped a bit from the top (and sides to maintain the aspect ratio) and brought up the highlights in the channel. Minor tweaks but I thought it might bring the eye in on the drama a bit more. In any case, very cool.
Oops. Somehow my slight crop got left behind. I don’t have the time to do it again but pulling it down a hair from the top and accordingly mostly from the right loses a bit of the fade on top (Do a bit of a scroll crop and see for yourself whether you like it or not). I also used frequency separation to colour in the “bald” grey spot urc.
As already mentioned, your astro photography is just literally out of this world. Very impression work, and kudos to you for the time, investment and passion, as it truly pays off in your imagery.
My lack of knowledge in this area precludes me from offering anything of substance - other than I’m quite impressed with the colors here. Yeah, many have the spectacular reds… but am really enjoying the blues peeking through. This is like what one might see here on earth looking up through the aftermath of a violent storm passing overhead - knowing there is clear skies above.
Very impressive!
Well, I can’t say I use PS exclusively, but the limited apps I use would include Helicon Focus and I still include the Nik plugins often in my workflow. However, I have never opened LR or use any other SW. Granted, my processing needs are quite basic, so I’m happy continuing on using pretty much just PS. OH, how could I forget Tony Kuyper’s TK stuff! I’d be lost without some of his brilliant addon’s over the years! So I guess you’re right Dan, I don’t just use Photoshop…
Lon
Thanks for the comments and thanks Kerry for taking the time to critique it.
For those interested, here is what the Raw stack out of camera looks like. I didn’t get the 2 nights lined up so cropped the overlap.
Astro cameras are getting really nice, the asi533 is a 1" sq. Sony made 11.1 mp sensor.
For the stretching and detail shown, very little noise for 5 hours of images stacked in good part because the camera is cooled to -20c while imaging.
I swapped channels in Pixinsight to bring out the blue Oxygen which is in the image but needs to be brought out in PP.
How do you know what colors to render the final image in? The raw stack is so different. Is it a user choice or is there some indication from the image data?
Thanks Youssef,
You can render the images per your choice but the filters used in Astrophotography capture the colors which can be brought out in processing… for instance, Oxygen is blue, which if there is enough captured in the nebula, it will come out in processing.
