StarTools

Stargazers lounge processing competition here https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/3628 ... mpetition/ i have to say startools holding its own against the competition imo

it was very interesting the process as I didn't look it up first so I felt it along the way to see where it took me.

You have to hand it to the rest for their patience in at least trying to reach StarTools' level of excellence!
Cheers

To be honest I found this data (although excellent) hard to process with Startools. Most of the interesting "wispy" parts lies in the O3-data, and I had a hard time putting it forward. Color was hard to get good, as well as reducing the stars and still keeping the dust looking uniform in the starfield...

Ivo?

I agree.. I found it very hard to get the fine details around the corners, specially the dark nebula on the right.
And the color also ,was hard to manage! But then again, I am pretty new to processing and first time playing with SHO

Carles wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 3:46 pm I agree.. I found it very hard to get the fine details around the corners, specially the dark nebula on the right.
And the color also ,was hard to manage! But then again, I am pretty new to processing and first time playing with SHO

BainthaBrakk wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 3:20 pm To be honest I found this data (although excellent) hard to process with Startools. Most of the interesting "wispy" parts lies in the O3-data, and I had a hard time putting it forward. Color was hard to get good, as well as reducing the stars and still keeping the dust looking uniform in the starfield...

Ivo?

Hmmmm... Very strange... I found processing this dataset trivial (due to its high quality). Even just importing the dataset and running AutoDev first time without further pre-processing shows a wealth of detail? Would you be able to be more specific as to what you are doing, what you were expecting and what the result was instead?

If O-III is of particular interest, have you tried Matrix in the Color module with dominant O-III coloring? (for example SHO 20SII+80Ha,20Ha+80OIII,100OIII), or tried compositing the SHO dataset with O-III weighted more highly for the synthetic luminance?

With regards to the stars, have you tried the new Shrink module? (or used the Life module's Isolate preset?)

Hope this helps!

admin wrote: ↑Tue Sep 29, 2020 3:15 am
Hmmmm... Very strange... I found processing this dataset trivial (due to its high quality). Even just importing the dataset and running AutoDev first time without further pre-processing shows a wealth of detail? Would you be able to be more specific as to what you are doing, what you were expecting and what the result was instead?

If O-III is of particular interest, have you tried Matrix in the Color module with dominant O-III coloring? (for example SHO 20SII+80Ha,20Ha+80OIII,100OIII), or tried compositing the SHO dataset with O-III weighted more highly for the synthetic luminance?

With regards to the stars, have you tried the new Shrink module? (or used the Life module's Isolate preset?)

Hope this helps!

Ok, I'll try to explain my problems. It's not a problem getting a good result, but I want a great one...

1) To get the O3 to show as needed, I opted for a bicolor image in composite mode (with synthetic lum) Even when I do I can't get enough details on the wispy O3 surrounding the nebula. I solved this by reducing the time for Ha to a ridiculously low amount though so that's sorted. (Even though I would like to be able to do this in some way after exiting the composite module)

2) The big problem though is taming the starfield. I have tried both the Life and the Shrink module, but this starfield is so dense that if you press the image to get the above mentioned wispy details of O3 to show up there are so many stars that they honestly can't cope with it without it looking unnatural. I read somewhere else that you don't like the artifacts created by removal of stars via Starnet++, and I fully agree. But in this case I can't see how you can get a nice result without using it in some way.

It's entirely subjective of course, but I would like the nebula to be "the star of the show" floating above the starfield, not buried in it.
Hope this makes sense.

/Ulf

BainthaBrakk wrote: ↑Tue Sep 29, 2020 6:15 am Ok, I'll try to explain my problems. It's not a problem getting a good result, but I want a great one...

1) To get the O3 to show as needed, I opted for a bicolor image in composite mode (with synthetic lum) Even when I do I can't get enough details on the wispy O3 surrounding the nebula. I solved this by reducing the time for Ha to a ridiculously low amount though so that's sorted. (Even though I would like to be able to do this in some way after exiting the composite module)

I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean on two accounts;
1. Regarding "not enough details on the wispy O3"; would you be able to point to show the problem along with a rendition (perhaps by someone else) that shows what you are after? What would you consider "enough details"?
2. Regarding "even though I would like to be able to do this in some way after exiting the composite module"; what do you mean here?
Do you mean being able to manipulate the O-III specifically as part of the composite? If so, have you tried the Entropy module's OIII preset for example?
It was specifically designed for this sort of narrowband manipulation (and yes, it is clever enough to track the OIII signal back to before you remapped any colors using the Matrix parameter in the Color module ).
E.g.;
(tweak to taste obviously)

2) The big problem though is taming the starfield. I have tried both the Life and the Shrink module, but this starfield is so dense that if you press the image to get the above mentioned wispy details of O3 to show up there are so many stars that they honestly can't cope with it without it looking unnatural. I read somewhere else that you don't like the artifacts created by removal of stars via Starnet++, and I fully agree. But in this case I can't see how you can get a nice result without using it in some way. It's entirely subjective of course, but I would like the nebula to be "the star of the show" floating above the starfield, not buried in it.

The Life module should be able to re-focus the viewer's attention on the Nebula. Of course, most of the stars in a given image are all foreground stars, so the nebula "floating above" the star field would not make a whole lot of sense. You should be able to push the new Shrink module quite far without things looking unnatural (much better at any rate than StarNet++). Combined with a full-fat Life module application you'd get something like this; Tweak everything to taste obviously. Is any of that useful?

Thanks for the help Ivo!

I'll try to show you via a picture (Anne S) which I think have nice detail in the nebula and a tamed starfield with your picture as comparison:
The "wispy" O3 I'm rambling about is in the bottom-left corner of the nebula..
I tried using the Entropy module a little, but I have not tried that before so I think I have to read up on that one. Thanks for the tip!

/Ulf

a close up of the process I pulled out, I shared the steps I had followed on my narrative on SGL