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AP Processing Challenge No. 7 - The Ring Nebula

Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2020 9:18 pm
by Graeme1858
Welcome to:

AP Processing Challenge No. 7

This time it's my turn! This is my capture of M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra.

M57 was one of the first decent images I captured last year when I had even less of a clue than I do now. This version is from 25th May this year and I was quite pleased with the improvement from the year before. The data is 16 x 240 second lights at 800 iso. 7 x Darks, it was getting late. 20 Bias frames, I don't do Bias now. 20 x Flat frames. All stacked in Deep Sky Stacker.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Just click the link above to download and process using your preferred software and methods. There are three versions of the image. An fts file straight out of DSS, a fit file or a tif file. Take your pick. Then post an image of your results with a description of your processing tricks for discussion. Or just join the discussion with helpful tips, comments or questions. AP Processing Challenge No. 7 starts today and ends on the 30th September.

Please keep the submissions coming in for future challenges, we're getting a bit short of data! Just send a PM to a Mod or an email to tssapchallenge@theskysearchers.com

And don't forget Challenge No 6 is still running too!

Have fun!

Regards

Graeme

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:00 pm
by andrewsscope
Hi Graeme I gave your M57 data using the tiff file,I cropped the image and increased the saturation,adjusted the levels in adobe cs2.I put it through Affinity using the develop tool and adjusted the exposure,clarity,highlights and shadow and ended up with this image.Thanks for the data to have a playaround.
M57 The Ring Nebula4.jpg

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:53 pm
by jerrysykes
My attempt with Startools 1.5 using a fits file.
Binned to 50%
Cropped (a lot)
Auto dev
Wipe
Global redo
Decon
Sharpen
Life
Color
Denoise
Challenge-7-download1-A.JPG

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 3:37 am
by bobharmony
I took the fit file and loaded it into StarTools.

Process consisted of:
Crop
Wipe
Autodev with ROI and ignore fine detail parameters set
Deconvolution
HDR
Color
Life
Just a touch of noise reduction

The result:
M57 The Ring Nebula.jpg
Bob

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:48 am
by Graeme1858
andrewsscope wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:00 pm Hi Graeme I gave your M57 data using the tiff file,I cropped the image and increased the saturation,adjusted the levels in adobe cs2.I put it through Affinity using the develop tool and adjusted the exposure,clarity,highlights and shadow and ended up with this image.Thanks for the data to have a playaround.

Good image Andy. The crop makes the nebula pop right out. I've got CS2 installed now but I haven't used it much yet. The first time I posted this one it was processed with Gimp.

Regards

Graeme

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:59 am
by Graeme1858
jerrysykes wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:53 pm My attempt with Startools 1.5 using a fits file.
Binned to 50%
Cropped (a lot)
Auto dev
Wipe
Global redo
Decon
Sharpen
Life
Color
Denoise

Startools seems to be bringing out a faint galaxy half way to the bottom left corner that I haven't seen before!

My telescope is definitely bloating the stars. Is there a processing fix for that in Startools?

Regards

Graeme

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:05 am
by Graeme1858
bobharmony wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 3:37 am I took the fit file and loaded it into StarTools.

Process consisted of:
Crop
Wipe
Autodev with ROI and ignore fine detail parameters set
Deconvolution
HDR
Color
Life
Just a touch of noise reduction

The result:

Bob

You got the galaxy too Bob!

The banding that is produced by my Canon 600D is evident in your process but not in Jerry's. Would that be the sharpen tool getting rid of it?

Regards

Graeme

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:15 am
by jerrysykes
Graeme1858 wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:59 am
jerrysykes wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:53 pm My attempt with Startools 1.5 using a fits file.
Binned to 50%
Cropped (a lot)
Auto dev
Wipe
Global redo
Decon
Sharpen
Life
Color
Denoise

Startools seems to be bringing out a faint galaxy half way to the bottom left corner that I haven't seen before!

My telescope is definitely bloating the stars. Is there a processing fix for that in Startools?

Regards

Graeme
Startools has a "shrink" module that will reduce the bloated stars. Make a star mask and then use either the reduce or tighten function.

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 12:54 pm
by bobharmony
Graeme1858 wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 6:05 am


You got the galaxy too Bob!

The banding that is produced by my Canon 600D is evident in your process but not in Jerry's. Would that be the sharpen tool getting rid of it?

Regards

Graeme
I think I could have been a bit more aggressive with noise reduction, or the "ignore fine detail" lever in Autodev, to reduce the banding. ST also has a tool to address banding directly that can be useful.

The Sharpen module would probably make banding more pronounced.

Bob

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:18 pm
by gcisko
Here is my attempt with the TIF file. I used PS levels, curves, Topaz DenoiseAI. I was trying to bring out detail in the ring itself.

M57 The Ring Nebulacrop.jpg
I may try again :Astronomer1:

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:36 pm
by Graeme1858
gcisko wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:18 pm Here is my attempt with the TIF file. I used PS levels, curves, Topaz DenoiseAI. I was trying to bring out detail in the ring itself.

I may try again :Astronomer1:

That's a nice sharp one Greg. Did you tweak the colour hues or did PS do that?

Regards

Graeme

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 7:15 pm
by gcisko
Graeme1858 wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:36 pm
gcisko wrote: Sat Sep 05, 2020 5:18 pm Here is my attempt with the TIF file. I used PS levels, curves, Topaz DenoiseAI. I was trying to bring out detail in the ring itself.

I may try again :Astronomer1:

That's a nice sharp one Greg. Did you tweak the colour hues or did PS do that?

Regards

Graeme
I tweaked the color using only the LEVELS function in PS. For some reason I seem to think it is more greenish with a red outer ring. But I am flexible to whatever is the real true color.

Also my solar images are colored by a color balance formula I obtained and use in PS. I adjust the color on almost everything else using LEVELS in PS.

Greg

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2020 1:46 am
by JayTee
Here's my shot at it. PS workflow included.
M57 The Ring Nebula JT.jpg
Ring Mods.jpg
Cheers,
JT

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2020 8:00 am
by Graeme1858
JayTee wrote: Sun Sep 06, 2020 1:46 am Here's my shot at it. PS workflow included.
Cheers,
JT

That's a nice clean one JT.

What does the Gaussian Blur function do?

Looking through all these renditions of the image shows how far out my collimation was at the time!

Regards

Graeme

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2020 3:58 pm
by Graeme1858
Here's mine:

Image

I used Gimp with the original (viewtopic.php?f=66&t=10351&p=88409&hilit=M57#p88409) But this time I used CS2.

Here's the workflow:

Image

The crop could have been tighter, I like Andy's crop size.

Tried selecting all to make the functions work then tried 16 bit and that worked!

Curves and levels, didn't make it too dark to try and keep it realistic, should have been a tad darker though!.

Turned up the saturation but the curve stretch bought the colours out more.

Noise reduction seems to have reduced the banding somewhat. But it's still visible.

Did an unsharp mask but I don't really know what that means! In Gimp it sharpens, in CS2 the effect was minimal.

The Sharpen tool did a good job at taking the bluring off some edges.

Then a final colour balance, I just raised all three channels, the star colours were enhanced.

Verdict?

Regards

Graeme

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2020 11:27 am
by Jockinireland
Hi Folks,

Thanks for sharing the data [mention]Graeme1858[/mention]

So, here is my go at this with Pixinsight (which i am using on the 45 day evaluation so really don't know what I'm doing yet.

The Canon banding has been mentioned so I used the canon Banding Script in PI which seems to have done a great job. After that i focuse on getting a good colour and trying to bring out some of the structure inside the nebula.

This is what I got;
M57_The_Ring_Nebula_DLM_PI.jpg
Cropped in a bit (seems to have saved down very small - dont know why!)
M57_The_Ring_Nebula_DLM_PI_crop.jpg
Close in the red ring is a bit - meh! I'll see if I can do something about that later.
And this was by beginners PI workflow
M57_PF_WF.JPG
M57_PF_WF.JPG (23.58 KiB) Viewed 8452 times
The canon Banding script is not shown there (don't know why on that either!!) - but it was done before colour calibration

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2020 4:30 pm
by Ruud
I tried GIMP but got nowhere with the 32 bit tif. I need to see a few tutorials.

In PS I tonemapped the image to 16bit and removed some noise (just a bit). I used Levels to adjust the shadows and mid tones.

I had some problems with the colours until I decided to use several masks and apply r, g and b curve adjustments to isolated regions of the nebula. This of course is cheating, but it looks nice:
  
Challenge7.png
  
Shown are a crop at 50% and a 100% inset. Click the image to see a larger view.

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2020 9:36 pm
by gcisko
Graeme1858 wrote: Sun Sep 06, 2020 8:00 am What does the Gaussian Blur function do?

Looking through all these renditions of the image shows how far out my collimation was at the time!

Regards

Graeme
I did see this question answered. I will try to explain it. If I am wrong I figure I will learn something :-)

The full res image was a bit fuzzy or out of focus from what I saw which is why I tried to sharpen it. Gaussian Blur will smooth out an image that is over sharpened. I have used masks to apply the Gaussian Blur (or any number of adjustments) only to certain parts of an image.

I find Gaussian Blur to really help if I try to enlarge an image by increasing the dot pitch. If you have GIMP it should be there as everything else I have seen in Photoshop seems to be included. Bottom line Gaussian Blur is definately an adjustment you want to keep in mind just in case.

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2020 9:43 pm
by JayTee
Hi Greg,

That's pretty much how I use gaussian blur also. First I use the unsharp mask to crisp everything up. I typically "over crisp" things (a little) on purpose because I know I'll go in with gaussian blur right after that to soften things up a little bit. The finished product has a subtle difference when handled this way but there is a difference.

Cheers,
JT

Re: AP Processing Challenge No. 7

Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2020 11:59 am
by Graeme1858
Jockinireland wrote: Mon Sep 07, 2020 11:27 am Hi Folks,

Thanks for sharing the data @Graeme1858

So, here is my go at this with Pixinsight (which i am using on the 45 day evaluation so really don't know what I'm doing yet.

The Canon banding has been mentioned so I used the canon Banding Script in PI which seems to have done a great job. After that i focuse on getting a good colour and trying to bring out some of the structure inside the nebula.

Good one David. I find the closer crop preferable on all these submissions.

So Canon banding is a thing and not just my 600D getting old! PI seems to handle it well.

How much longer have you got on your trial?

Regards

Graeme