Everything goes great until I try to balance color

[xonefs]

I'm test processing a few images in startools and I keep running into a trend- it all looks great and the modules produce impressive results in an intuitive manner until I get to the color module then things seem to fall apart. I just can't seem to balance and get color looking good. I'm very impressed with the workflow/results on the other modules.

Here's my latest example- I' trying to process this data set I shot on the iris nebula. I spent a lot of nights imaging this and redoing parts from some of the darkest skies in the US with about 14 hours used , so I feel like I should be able to get better results from this.

I'm not sure if it is a problem with my data or what, but it appears there is some uneveness in the color channels. When I do maxrgb it appears green dominates one corner and red dominates towards another. Then my stars seem off, and I have a bit of a greenish hue to the nebula. I've seen good images of this where everything is brown in the dark structure with a lot of nice gold stars.

I did have an issue with a chip in my blue filter edge causing issues and I flipped it and thought it fixed that when I reshot everything on that channel and the flats look fine now.

If I try to eliminate more green in one part then it just throws off other areas of the image in the background.

this shows maxrgb where it is unbalanced

greenish areas:

final best I could get it on that attempt:

It definitely looks better and decent after noise reduction, but I'm wondering how to do better. This type of processing is challenging and new to me as I am more comfortable with narrowband.

here's a link to my data and tiff of what I came up with: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing


maybe not as blue on the background but these are the kind of colors I usually see on this that look so nice: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160506.html

[almcl]

I am no expert, but your data looks very nice, thank you for sharing.

I had a very quick go using the compose module for the initial load and got the the result below. It would be handy to know the integration times of the four channels, to get a better result, but are the colours closer to what you were after?

Iris.jpg (484.42 KiB) Viewed 2958 times

[Mike in Rancho]

Indeed, it does seem like nice data and fun to play with.

I admit I didn't pay much attention to the exposure settings in Compose - I hit keep too quickly and when I was doing so, it almost looked like the times had autofilled themselves to something other than the default?

In Wipe I did notice what seemed like stray color patches. Normally stuff like that cleans up with a couple hits of dark anomaly. Or cranking up the aggressiveness, but I didn't want to do so. Just figured maybe they were real, but I think they may have become problematic when I got to Color. Possible also I could have stretched less.

To try to get closer to the sample you referenced, after sampling balance I backed off the green, then capped it, then bottomed out the bright saturation while maxing out the dark saturation, then moved overall saturation up to about mid slider. Maybe a bit overdone, but does create that orangey-brown in the dust.

The reference image was an APOD, but who knows what he did to achieve that. For one, an entire star seems to be missing! The really bright red one that is a bit of trouble, sure, but disappearing it just seems so Darth Vader.

This is my relatively quick go at it. I might try again with a different Wipe to see if I can do anything with those color patches, unless someone else has hints about that.

xonefs iris 1b.jpg (501.25 KiB) Viewed 2955 times

[xonefs]

Thanks- if you use this data anywhere else please credit my IG: frozen.spectrum as the data source

The last one Mike is an interesting rendition. I like the detail and richness you got around the blue iris but other parts seem a bit red saturated for my tastes. It seems challenging to get the nice brown color on the dust without oversaturating other parts of the image and an unnatural color cast as that's the issue I ran into. I definitely find processing narrowband easier.

The integration times are as follows: Lum 18720s, Red: 9540s, Blue: 11520s, Green: 10800s

Technical data is zwo 2600mm with Astrodon LRGB filters with a stellarvue svx102t reduced to f5.2 at 528mm. Luminance are 120s exposures gain 100 and RGB are 180s exposures Gain 100. Most data acquired in May in the bootheel of NM (b1), with some re-shot in the eastern sierras in June (b2ish).

I tried again last night and got a bit better. This time I played more with the wipe module and tried binning 75% but I would prefer not to bin luminance at all and lose resolution. Is there a way to just bin RGB channels and not lum? I thought I saw something about this and I know some people bin RGB 2x2 but I don't know how this would help as I've never tried.

this was 2nd attempt from startools:

after looking on my phone I realized it seemed dark so I did another 2nd stretch outside of startools to see and this is the result

it looks good, but still I think I could get better, and I probably should have stretched more initially but it's hard to gauge on the brightness of my laptop monitor in different conditions.

I'm not sure how the stars are. I believe I shot some shorter exposures of just RGB stars (30s RGB and 10s lum it looks like) to see if I could get more color without blowing them out to combine in post but I haven't looked at that data. I had just heard of people doing that so I shot them to have. I really like the rich stars I've seen on some versions of this. Is there any method of how to combine that in startools?

Another issue I had was the HDR module on this- I think I could get more detail out of the Iris but the more extreme HDR presets that had good results there seemed to bloat the stars so I just went with expose dso core which was more subtle but didn't bloat stars.

[Cheman]

Hi, I took a very quidk try at your data, here are my results. I use Legacy in the color module rather than Consistancy Nice data. Che

NewComposite (Small).jpg (132.19 KiB) Viewed 2931 times

[xonefs]

Hi, I took a very quidk try at your data, here are my results. I use Legacy in the color module rather than Consistancy Nice data. CheNewComposite (Small).jpg

Very nice. Can you post a screenshot of your settings in the color module? The stars and background look good and neutral. Dust looks pretty good, maybe I'm seeing a hint of green tint but overall it looks the most neutral so far and closest to what I would want. Maybe it's the other examples of rich brown dust I've seen that aren't as accurate or I would need more color data.

Also what parameters did you use to stretch, did you use a ROI? I think I just use defaults with no ROI and it seemed a bit under stretched after just in from what I did in ST. Wish there was an easy way to share settings/workflow (maybe there is?).

[Cheman]

here are my settings from the log

--- Photographic Film Development Emulation
Parameter [White Calibration] set to [Use Stars]
Parameter [Gamma] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Skyglow] set to [0 %]
Parameter [Digital Development] set to [97.91 %]
Parameter [Blue Luminance Contrib.] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Green Luminance Contrib.] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Red Luminance Contrib.] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Headroom] set to [5 %]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Filter] set to [2.0 pixels]
--- Auto Develop
Parameter [Ignore Fine Detail <] set to [5.2 pixels]
Parameter [Outside RoI Influence] set to [15 %]
Parameter [RoI X1] set to [738 pixels]
Parameter [RoI Y1] set to [261 pixels]
Parameter [RoI X2] set to [3516 pixels (-817)]
Parameter [RoI Y2] set to [2501 pixels (-293)]
Parameter [Detector Gamma] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Shadow Linearity] set to [50 %]
--- Bin
Parameter [Scale] set to [scale 50.00% / +2.00 bits / +1.00x SNR improvement]
Image size is 2166 x 1397
--- Wipe
Parameter [Synthetic Dark/Bias] set to [Off]
Parameter [Gradient Edge Behavior] set to [Absorb 50%]
Parameter [Synthetic Flats] set to [Off]
Parameter [Sampling Precision] set to [256 x 256 pixels]
Parameter [Dark Anomaly Filter] set to [4 pixels]
Parameter [Gradient Falloff] set to [0 %]
Parameter [Synth. Bias Edge Area] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Gradient Aggressiveness] set to [75 %]
Parameter [Correlation Filtering] set to [Off]
Redoing stretch of linear data
--- Auto Develop
Parameter [Ignore Fine Detail <] set to [4.3 pixels]
Parameter [Outside RoI Influence] set to [15 %]
Parameter [RoI X1] set to [0 pixels]
Parameter [RoI Y1] set to [0 pixels]
Parameter [RoI X2] set to [2166 pixels (-0)]
Parameter [RoI Y2] set to [1397 pixels (-0)]
Parameter [Detector Gamma] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Shadow Linearity] set to [50 %]
--- Contrast
Parameter [Expose Dark Areas] set to [Yes]
Parameter [Brightness Retention] set to [Off]
Parameter [Precision] set to [256 x 256 pixels]
Parameter [Shadow Detail Size] set to [10 pixels]
Parameter [Locality] set to [50 %]
Parameter [Shadow Dyn Range Alloc] set to [50 %]
--- HDR
Parameter [Small Detail Precision] set to [Max]
Parameter [Channels] set to [Brightness Only]
Parameter [Algorithm] set to [Reveal All]
Parameter [Dark/Bright Response] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Detail Size Range] set to [1000 pixels]
Parameter [Strength] set to [1.3]
--- Color
Parameter [Bias Slider Mode] set to [Sliders Reduce Color Bias]
Parameter [Style] set to [Artistic, Not Detail Aware]
Parameter [LRGB Method Emulation] set to [RGB Ratio, CIELab Luminance Retention]
Parameter [Matrix] set to [Identity (OFF)]
Parameter [Dark Saturation] set to [3.0]
Parameter [Bright Saturation] set to [3.0]
Parameter [Saturation Amount] set to [205 %]
Parameter [Blue Bias Reduce] set to [1.22]
Parameter [Green Bias Reduce] set to [1.13]
Parameter [Red Bias Reduce] set to [1.15]
Parameter [Mask Fuzz] set to [1.0 pixels]
Parameter [Cap Green] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Highlight Repair] set to [Off]
Mask used (BASE64 PNG encoded)

--- Shrink
Parameter [Mode] set to [Tighten]
Parameter [Halo Extend] set to [1 pixels]
Parameter [Iterations] set to [1]
Parameter [Regularization] set to [0.00]
Parameter [Color Taming] set to [0 pixels]
Parameter [De-ringing] set to [Off]
Parameter [Un-glow Strength] set to [Off]
Parameter [Un-glow Kernel] set to [Off]
Mask used (BASE64 PNG encoded)



--- Super Structure
Parameter [Detail Preservation] set to [Linear Brightness Mask Darken]
Parameter [Compositing Algorithm] set to [Multiply, Gamma Correct]
Parameter [Brightness, Color] set to [Process Both]
Parameter [Brightness Retention] set to [Local Median]
Parameter [Mask Fuzz] set to [1.0 pixels]
Parameter [Airy Disk Radius] set to [50 %]
Parameter [Gamma] set to [0.75]
Parameter [Detail Preservation Radius] set to [20.0 pixels]
Parameter [Saturation] set to [50 %]
Parameter [Strength] set to [100 %]
--- Unified De-Noise
Parameter [Grain Size] set to [5.0 pixels]
Parameter [Walking Noise Size] set to [1.0 pixels]
Parameter [Walking Noise Angle] set to [0]
--- Unified De-Noise
Parameter [Scale 1] set to [99 %]
Parameter [Scale 2] set to [95 %]
Parameter [Scale 3] set to [95 %]
Parameter [Scale 4] set to [95 %]
Parameter [Scale 5] set to [50 %]
Parameter [Equalized Grain] set to [0 %]
Parameter [Scale Correlation] set to [50 %]
Parameter [Color Detail Loss] set to [50 %]
Parameter [Brightness Detail Loss] set to [50 %]
Parameter [Grain Dispersion] set to [5.0 pixels]
File saved [C:\Users\chema\Desktop\iris test data\NewComposite.jpg].

[Cheman]

If you think there is still too much green try lowering the green slider just a bit. I find even small adjustments of the color sliders can make a big difference in the colors. And sometimes I use sliders increase instead of decrease. It just depends. I may take another stab at it when I have more time. It is such a personal preference when it comes to color, as well as a lot of other things as well. Colors in the dust lanes are especially difficult for me sometimes.

[xonefs]

If you think there is still too much green try lowering the green slider just a bit. I find even small adjustments of the color sliders can make a big difference in the colors. And sometimes I use sliders increase instead of decrease. It just depends. I may take another stab at it when I have more time. It is such a personal preference when it comes to color, as well as a lot of other things as well. Colors in the dust lanes are especially difficult for me sometimes.

Thanks for the log. are the setting from photographic film module something you used or does everything just go into the log from all modules? If you started there curious about the rationale since this is a module I usually see skipped and I haven't explored it.

I'll give it a go. yes, color is dust lanes is a challenge...

[Cheman]

I dont think that was thestart of the log, I'm sure I did an autodev and maye other stuff but then went back and redid stretch. My log had not been cleared out in a while and there is so many lines of gibberish(to me) that I just grabbed the last part of my log, I might have missed something. I've since cleared my log so if I have another go, it will be complete
Che