RE: [APML] 6x7 North American Nebula - From Seattle?

["Jeff Ball" <jeffball@zoominternet.net>]

Hello Jay,
Wonderful image!  You have already received some great advice.  I am playing
around with what I think is a new way to see realtime color balance
adjustments.  It is actually a modification of a technique from Michael
Reichmann's Luminous Landscape site and is intended as a means to manipulate
color images so that you can achieve a color filtered monochrome image.  I
think the result is different from a simple color balance.  I guess it is a
linear adjusment of color input as opposed to using curves to achieve color
balance?  A little out of my league on the how's and why's.  Here is what I
did with your image in Photoshop 5.0:

Layer-New-Adjusment layer
Type= Channel mixer-check "monochrome" box and then click OK
Change the "channel mixer" layer from "normal" to "luminosity"
Double click on the layer box and then you can play with the mix of the
colors and see the effect realtime.  I think you want to keep the mix
totalling 100%.  I ended up with a mix of red=+38, green = +24, and blue =
+44.  You should do as Matt suggested and revisit the original scan data and
start from there.  You can leave the layer as normal and play around with
the color mix to increase the effect as seen through either a red, green, or
blue filter for a nice monochrome image.  The more you play with this, the
more the image will show the light falloff, but that can be remedied with
techniques discussed here before.  Great image and hope some of the above is
useful for you to play with as you work on this beautiful image.

Jeff Ball
www.astro-photography.com

-----Original Message-----
From: astro-photo-bounces@seds.org
[mailto:astro-photo-bounces@seds.org]On Behalf Of Jay E. Potts
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 9:45 PM
To: astro-photo@seds.org
Subject: [APML] 6x7 North American Nebula - From Seattle?


I have seen some absolutely stunning images of "The North American Nebula."
on this group, and I won't pretend that this image is in the same league.

However... This image is significant to me, because it was taken, for all
intensive purposes, from within Seattle! For the last 30 years, I didn't
think it was possible to get results like this surrounded by major cities.
Of course, processing tools have been very limited for the majority of that
time. But I didn't think useful data of any kind could be gathered.

In any event, this image is the result of stacking four images that I took
will performing a test to see how long I could expose E200 before washing
out the background in light pollution. These images sat for months until I
had a way to scan them. Then the scans sat for months until I had time to
process them.

Large Image:
http://www.whirlpoolgalaxy.com/ngc7000_p67.html

Small Image (details):
http://www.whirlpoolgalaxy.com/ngc7000_p67_intro.html

I suppose my processing could use some work. Getting a reasonable color
balance is pretty tough because of all the green and blue I had to remove in
an attempt to reduce the effects of light pollution.

Suggestions welcome.

Thanks,
Jay E. Potts
http://www.whirlpoolgalaxy.com (Astrophotography)
http://www.americanfocus.com (Landscape and Wildlife Photography)


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