Theatre Hipparchus

Enhancing A Cluster

It is a shame that I love globular clusters as much as I do. They just won't co-operate for me. Here is a sample of M13 that I captured last year in difficult conditions. 

Here's the rub -  I would like more colour in this effort but I take heart in that you need pristine imaging conditions and much better focus/tracking than I have here. More time in total would probably help as well. This is 60 X 60 second exposures. 

This is from a one shot camera MX7C and after I split the raws into the various components I knew that a struggle lay ahead. I use a L + RGB process for most images but there was very little colour to work with here.

Here is the same data with a lighter background treatment.

Background treatment had little effect. Core isn't totally burnt out though. In Photoshop I tried adjusting the histograms individually and several different colour balance and variation tweaks. This would be a difficult object to mask. 

Light Machine  

This was part of a package of plugins and I have found it to be simpler to use than some of the native Photoshop processes. Haven't arrived at the bottom of all the wonderful things it will do.

The GUI was quite intuitive for a novice imager like me. I also like the variety of treatments that are available from this one plugin. Background and highlights were seperately manipulated. It has a fade option from the edit drop down menu after you are back in Photoshop. There is always undo. I like the split screen option that works with ongoing preview as well.

Certainly not a wallhanger but overall the image looks better IMO. The Light Machine Plug made colour extraction quite a bit easier for me. The next assignment is to capture much better data and not have to use the plug at all!

Please feel free to add to the discussion by leaving a comment below or email me from the menu on the left of this page.

All the best

David