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killing gradients and light pollution in images


red dwalf

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need some serious help and advice here folks, i`m getting a lot of gradients which i believe is mostly caused by rubbish skies and light pollution, no matter what i try to do in post processing i`m not getting the results i would like, any and all surgestions on good software or programs that can provide good results needed before i loose what little hair i have left, i have Noel carbonies action in photoshop, version of photoshop i`m using is cs3, i also have a copy of nebulosity 3 which drives me made when i try to process images with it, mega help needed please. 

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I feel your pain Rob. I have trouble shifting gradients so the end result looks reasonably natural. A combination of Noels actions Gradient and LP Removal with a bit of Colour Blotch usually works but I have to take it easy as it can pull too much out. Gradient Xterminator works sometimes depending on the level of LP and is adjustable for aggressiveness and level.

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Hi Rob,

 

Is this with the Canon or the Atik. I say this as I have gradient issues with my QHY8 Pro but not with my Atik. Sorry if I'm teaching to the converted but are you calibrating fully  with bias, darks and flats, albeit I don't use flats with the Atik. This helps to even the image. Without doubt the best process to eliminate the gradients is Pixinsight's DBE. If you want to see if Pixinsight will help remove gradients try downloading Pixinsight, it's free for a month and a simple process is to use is ABE (Automatic Background Extraction). I you want to pursue this option reply and I will go through the process.

 

Steve

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many thanks, i`m using my Atik 460 mono and have included some darks, flats and bias frames, currently stacking in deep sky stacker which depending on what settings you use produces different results, some shocking but some reasonable looking, the problem with pixinsight apart from the price, is it looks very intense and full on for a muppet like me to get my head around, what someone has said to me today is that some of the single subs haven't got the same quality as others i.e. poor seeing on different nights so when stack them all together it`s adding rubbish to the final image, so i`ll have another go and only include the good seeing ones, which will be about 5 !  

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I have tried this a few times rob with some good results, you may have already tried but if things are playing up in processing i always head to this first..Doug German

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5 hours ago, red dwalf said:

never heard of startools till yesterday, looks promising and at a realistic price

Its free too try all that limits it is you can`t save final image ,but evertything works no limitations here is a link to a tutorial http://astro.ecuadors.net/processing-a-noisy-dslr-image-stack-with-startools/ Startools forum is also a good place for info http://forum.startools.org/

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Looks very interesting thanks, I see that the tutorial is for dlsr cameras, I suppose it is good for CCD mono cameras as well.

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18 hours ago, red dwalf said:

Looks very interesting thanks, I see that the tutorial is for dlsr cameras, I suppose it is good for CCD mono cameras as well.

Yes ,:thumbsup:

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