StarTools

Weather of late (not to mention my cool new toy!) has given me a good opportunity to revisit some old troublesome data. Tonight it was time to give some data of NGC 6992 which I shot back in November another shot.

I have not been happy with my results on this previously...tonight was the first effort that I'm at least mildly pleased with. I still think there's more data and detail, particularly in the top right of the image...but this is at least moving in the right direction.



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• Began with an Autodevelop, standard settings, to identify the gradient and artifacts.
• Then a wipe, Gradient mode, 97% aggressiveness, 256x256 precision
• Manual develop, Gamma to 2.2, DAF to 18.4 px
• Cropped out the remaining gradient at the edges, ~ 150 pixels per side.
• Contrast, default settings, to bring some of the brightness back.
• Binned to 50%
• Created a mask using the "seed-growing method" and used the Life module in isolate mode. ADS 256x256, ADR 20px, Saturation 150%, Strength 81%, Mask Fuzz 10px
• Another trip through contrast, mask in place.
• Filter, mask in place, to nudge some of the greens/blues at the edges a bit.
• Wavelet Sharpen, defaults.
• Disabled tracking, Denoise at 15%, 9%, 4%, 2%, 0%.
• Star mask with Auto Stars, Repair module, Warp
• Color (star mask in place) saturation bumped to 163%
• Synth, Refractor mode, seasoned to taste.
• Loaded nebula mask, Fractal Flux to give some "pop" to some edges.

That is actually a really nice rendition!
It's got a certain mystery to it. Almost like you're looking at it with human eyes from a spaceship nearby.
Nice that you documented it too - it's a very interesting look.

Thanks, Ivo!

New version this morning, just mirrored and flipped so the orientation is a bit more "normal". No change to processing.

I think I might finally be getting there. This is as close as I've come yet to what I envision in my head...