ASTRO: NGC 7008 reprocessed

Last year I had some, for me, great seeing and got 9 20 minute
luminosity frames of this one binned 1x1 for 0.5" pixels. But the color
data was weak and under less than average seeing. I'd planned on
getting more color this year but the weather and seeing had other ideas.
Seeing, what few clear nights we had was just not sufficient even for
color to go with the luminosity data. Using the weak color data gave a
washed out color image. Upping the saturation just made it plain ugly
and blotchy. I tried all the tricks I'd heard of to help saturation but
nothing worked very well.

A couple days ago I came upon a presentation Adam Block made at the AIC
conference a couple years ago. In it included a single slide saying use
lab color and adjust the a and b layers via contrast to up saturation in
these cases. A adjusts the red side while b the blue. So I gave it a
try and it does work very well. Not like good color data in the first
place but sure did improve my image. I'm still looking to get more
color data but wanted to get this method out as it worked, on this image
at least, far better than the other ways I'd learned. It also preserved
more sharpness in the overall image. Before I had used some light
unsharp masking to get back the detail lost when the fuzzy color was
added. None was needed using this method. In fact there's nothing but
a stretch applied to the luminosity data but for a slight amount of
background smoothing but even that was very light. I doubt many would
see the difference.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=9x20'x1 RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick


--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

wow!

"Rick Johnson" wrote in message
om...
Last year I had some, for me, great seeing and got 9 20 minute
luminosity frames of this one binned 1x1 for 0.5" pixels. But the color
data was weak and under less than average seeing. I'd planned on
getting more color this year but the weather and seeing had other ideas.
Seeing, what few clear nights we had was just not sufficient even for
color to go with the luminosity data. Using the weak color data gave a
washed out color image. Upping the saturation just made it plain ugly
and blotchy. I tried all the tricks I'd heard of to help saturation but
nothing worked very well.

A couple days ago I came upon a presentation Adam Block made at the AIC
conference a couple years ago. In it included a single slide saying use
lab color and adjust the a and b layers via contrast to up saturation in
these cases. A adjusts the red side while b the blue. So I gave it a
try and it does work very well. Not like good color data in the first
place but sure did improve my image. I'm still looking to get more
color data but wanted to get this method out as it worked, on this image
at least, far better than the other ways I'd learned. It also preserved
more sharpness in the overall image. Before I had used some light
unsharp masking to get back the detail lost when the fuzzy color was
added. None was needed using this method. In fact there's nothing but
a stretch applied to the luminosity data but for a slight amount of
background smoothing but even that was very light. I doubt many would
see the difference.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=9x20'x1 RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick


--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".

Rick,

I only remember the first version faintly, but this one is definately a
keeper. Great detail.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
om...
Last year I had some, for me, great seeing and got 9 20 minute
luminosity frames of this one binned 1x1 for 0.5" pixels. But the color
data was weak and under less than average seeing. I'd planned on
getting more color this year but the weather and seeing had other ideas.
Seeing, what few clear nights we had was just not sufficient even for
color to go with the luminosity data. Using the weak color data gave a
washed out color image. Upping the saturation just made it plain ugly
and blotchy. I tried all the tricks I'd heard of to help saturation but
nothing worked very well.

A couple days ago I came upon a presentation Adam Block made at the AIC
conference a couple years ago. In it included a single slide saying use
lab color and adjust the a and b layers via contrast to up saturation in
these cases. A adjusts the red side while b the blue. So I gave it a
try and it does work very well. Not like good color data in the first
place but sure did improve my image. I'm still looking to get more
color data but wanted to get this method out as it worked, on this image
at least, far better than the other ways I'd learned. It also preserved
more sharpness in the overall image. Before I had used some light
unsharp masking to get back the detail lost when the fuzzy color was
added. None was needed using this method. In fact there's nothing but
a stretch applied to the luminosity data but for a slight amount of
background smoothing but even that was very light. I doubt many would
see the difference.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=9x20'x1 RGB=2x10', STL-11000XM, Paramount ME

Rick


--
Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".