Seven Sisters - My First Real Exercise in Adobe

[chris_g]

Taken over two nights, the 8th and 9th

Equipment used EvoStar 80ED with .85 reducer/flattener and Canon 600D using Optalong L-Pro C clip filter with APT and PHD 2 guiding

67 120 second subs, 20 dark, 10 dark flat, 10 flat, 10 bias

Stacked in DSS and processed using Adobe with Astronomy Tools Pro Action Set and StarSpikes Plugin, adjusted contrast and brightness in Adobe, used Astronomy Tools to add color to the stars and StarSpikes Pro to...well you can see that

I highlighted the two stars on the left as I thought they might be proud parents looking on at their children, some of my more artistic side starting to show. I started with a simple star pattern as I thought it would be easier to process than a DSO such as Andromeda . I learned quickly that I needed some serious assistance as the learning curve just became astronomical, no pun intended! So I went looking and found Star Tools Pro action set and Star Spikes plugin.

As always, thanks for looking!

What you see is what you get,
Clear Skies

[John Donne]

Fun, Fun, Fun !

The Star Spike plugin is very powerful.

[Juno16]

Cool looking stars Chris!

Actually, they are quite the opposite of cool!

These hot blues have a ton of surrounding blue reflection nebulae that your 2+ hours with the Canon should have captured.

If you feel inclined, try a few more stretches in Curves to see if you might be able to bring it out. Look at Google Images to see what I am talking about.

When I dabbled in Photoshop, I really liked using arcsine stretches in Curves. They are not part of the PS package, they were plugins that I installed. If you are interested, the link in this post on CN should lead you to them.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/5956 ... h-stretch/

Keep up the nice work Chris!

[messier 111]

nice take , thx .

[chris_g]

Cool looking stars Chris!

Actually, they are quite the opposite of cool!

These hot blues have a ton of surrounding blue reflection nebulae that your 2+ hours with the Canon should have captured.

If you feel inclined, try a few more stretches in Curves to see if you might be able to bring it out. Look at Google Images to see what I am talking about.

When I dabbled in Photoshop, I really liked using arcsine stretches in Curves. They are not part of the PS package, they were plugins that I installed. If you are interested, the link in this post on CN should lead you to them.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/5956 ... h-stretch/

Keep up the nice work Chris!

I love blue, my favorite color! The surrounding blue reflection nebula data is really faint, I couldn't seem to pull anything out using curves in PS so I went back into DSS and adjusted the RGB/K levels and luminance there with a method I learned from @SkyHiker. That tells me the data is there, I am just going to have to learn some more about using curves in PS. I also loaded the the arcsine curves stretch from the Cloudy Nights post.

A very good exercise for me, thanks!

[chris_g]

Cool looking stars Chris!

Actually, they are quite the opposite of cool!

These hot blues have a ton of surrounding blue reflection nebulae that your 2+ hours with the Canon should have captured.

If you feel inclined, try a few more stretches in Curves to see if you might be able to bring it out. Look at Google Images to see what I am talking about.

When I dabbled in Photoshop, I really liked using arcsine stretches in Curves. They are not part of the PS package, they were plugins that I installed. If you are interested, the link in this post on CN should lead you to them.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/5956 ... h-stretch/

Keep up the nice work Chris!

I stretched it in DSS, then I used a multiply curve and then a brightness/contrast in PS. If I messed with it much more, I get a lot of noise. I'm thinking an image run with a longer exposure time and perhaps an HDR process to truly capture the nebula surrounding the sisters. I need to research the HDR process, definitely a good exercise for me

[Juno16]

You did manage pull a bit of it out. Looks like your focus might be a bit soft too.

Maybe if you can put upload your tiff file , someone might be able to do a quick process to see what is there. I would love to take a look, but my wife and I are doing our first full day taking care of our 3 month old grandchild tomorrow.

Irregardless, you are progressing quite nicely and you should feel really good about that!
AP is challenging and you ought to be quite proud of what you have accomplished so far!

[STEVE333]

Hi Chris - I also used Photoshop when starting out in AP. I found the 6-part series of YouTube tutorials (for Photoshop) by Doug German to be very helpful. Maybe you will too. Each tutorial is only about 10 min long and usually covers just one step in the processing, so, they are easy to follow. They are designed for people beginning in astrophotography image processing using Photoshop.

If you are interested the link below is to the first of the six tutorials. If you like it you can search and find the others on YouTube. They are all free!



Good luck,
Steve