PI TV episode 1 Starnet blend question

Gary Crawford

I have been getting a lot of value out of your workshops and lessons. Really appreciate what you're doing. I worked through the first episode of PixInsight TV using my own data. I'm wondering if I chose the wrong type of image to work on for this. That is, I thought I'd see how the process worked on M42. I was able to bring out a lot of the dimmer nebulosity around M42. So far so good. However, after blending using my version of your Smooththing,  all the stars shrank and all the dimmer stars disappeared. My median background image (my version of your Smooththing) has huge gradations. If I chose a Scale in MLT too large, the resulting image was black. At a smaller scale a median background appeared so I chose that one. It was either black or the one attached. Before I trouble-shoot and go back and start tweaking things, is the Starnet-related process outlined in Episode 1 better for images like your example rather than with images with massive amounts of Nebulosity like M42? Or am I doing something fundamentally wrong? I suspect it's hard for you to tell.

I've attached a composite image with the basic frames I worked with. I just did the minimum editing for the sake if this exercise. No noise reduction or anything like that.

Thanks!

BlockHead

Gary,

Remember, BOTH images ...your starless image AND your original need to be non-linear (permanently stretched). You currently have a linear original image if I am not mistaken.

This, again if I am correct, is the source of your issue.

Tricky eh?

-the Blockhead

Gary Crawford

Aha! It's so easy to loose track and I hadn't noticed. Tricky isn't the half of it. Thanks Adam!!

Gary Crawford

PS Adam, I retried the process using my stretched RGB image and the result was outstanding! I'll be using this method fairly regularly now. Thanks for the superb lesson.

BlockHead

Pass on the word ... good stuff found at ABS (AdamBlockStudios) :)

Thanks Gary.

-the Blockhead