Color calibration before or after DBE?

[astrovienna]

I've seen processing walkthroughs from some of the experts that use DBE before color calibration/background neutralization, and some that do it after.  Does it matter?

Kevin

[lucchett]

Hi,
I think there's general agreement that DBE should be run first, otherwise you perform a wrong calibration based on "polluted data".

Andrea

[jkmorse]

I agree with Andrea.  I think its important to clean up the document re gradients, etc through DBE before doing the color calibration.

[lucchett]

well, i think I've found a possible exception which I cannot explain.

I have one image in which I am personally unsure if there is a gradient or not.
After spending hours with DBE, I realized that it was mainly a calibration problem and a peculiar shape of the nebula.
color cal alone works quite well.
doing dbe after cc seems to improve further my result, which is a bit contraddictory.
The only reason I se is that my DBe model is probably wrong.

I am going to post the image in the "processing challenge section"
Andrea

[astrovienna]

Thanks for the advice.  I'm still trying to get my LRGB process to fall into place, so this helps.

[Warhen]

Absolutely! How can we hope to get a nice color calibration with lovely cyan and magenta gradients lurking about? BM, then BN, then CC and you're off! :>)