Flailing away at NGC7331

All,

I tried to take some time and apply some of the lessons that R. Scott Ireland presents in his book "Photoshop Astronomy". All of the faults in this image are a result of my poor application of the lesson subjects, and should not reflect poorly on what is an excellent image processingn book.

I stacked just about every halfway reasonable image I had of NGC7331, at least 3 hours worth probably closer to 4 hours. Some were out of focus slightly, which might have been detrimental.

Massaged in Photoshop CS, Nebulosity and Stellar Magic Pro.

I certainly have a way to go...tried to fix my gradients, and ended up with a large scale snakeskin background. The galaxy ended up looking like something airbrushed on the side of a conversion van due to an application of deconvolution.....not too natural. :S

Practice, practice, practice.

Thanks for looking, and critiques are greatly appreciated.

Attached Image:

And, here is the original stack, with just a quick pass through DPP on each color channel in Stellar Magic Pro.

Thanks for looking!

Attached Image:

I see nothing to complain about in that shot, I for one would be proud to have taken and processed it. You certainly flattened out that gradient big time! What was your process to handle it? Guess I have another book to check out.
Nice work,
Larry

Nicely done Alec!
Practice makes perfection... and Processing is the hardest part of Imaging, for sure..., keep it up! 8)