Re: [APML] A little M31 & M45

[Wei-Hao Wang <whwang@gmail.com>]

Scott, those are beautiful images.  I especially like the colors.

As for the smoothing issue, I don't think Scott's images are too
smooth or artificial at all.  The look very nice.  However, in general,
I do prefer images with a little noise/grain left.  

In an image, usually the faintest areas are full of noise/grain and the 
very bright pixels are real signals.  However, the transition between 
noise and low level signal is continuous.  There is always a brightness 
range where noise and low level signal coexist and cannot exactly 
tell what is noise.  When we look at such an area, our eyes are 
annoyed by the noise but can still recognize some pattern which may 
well be real signal.  I like to protect such an area from being smoothed.  
Otherwise I lose those signals and the image looks too smooth.

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Wei-Hao

-- 
________________________________________________________________
Wei-Hao Wang  :)

Institute for Astronomy at University of Hawaii

Address:                       
2680 Woodlawn Drive         Personal Website:
Honolulu, HI 96822             http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~wang
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