Critique on my Orion Nebula shot changed my whole editing flow

I posted a stacked photo of the Orion Nebula last week and someone pointed out my stars were all blown out. They said I was cranking the saturation way too hard on the core and losing all the fine detail. I started using a star mask in Photoshop before doing any color stretching. It made a huge difference because now the nebula colors pop without washing out the surrounding stars. I also switched to using just two star masks instead of layering multiple edits. The final image looks way more natural and I can actually see the faint dust lanes around the core now. Has anyone else found a specific editing trick that totally changed their astro photo results?

3 comments

3 Comments

ivan_hayes2927d ago

Does it really matter that much though?

hunt.rowan27d ago

You know someone I work with totally had the same thing happen? He was getting so frustrated with his moon shots looking all blurry and someone told him he was sharpening too much before stacking, now his photos actually look like craters instead of weird smudges.

xena_anderson27d ago

That sharpening before stacking advice rings a bell. I had the same problem and switching to a light touch with sharpening only after stacking made a huge difference in my moon shots. Now I actually get clean detail in the craters instead of that weird digital noise.