Stretch to highlight faint details

[viktorbravo]

I have an image of the Leo Triplet that I would like to stretch to show more of the tidal tail in NGC 3628 without blowing out the stars or increasing the background too much.  I used the Masked Stretch process along with curves but I was wondering if anyone could suggest a better way to process the image to show the faint details.

http://crashmaster.smugmug.com/Other/Astroimages/i-NZNnbGV/0/O/Leo%20Proc1.jpg

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Vince

[jerryyyyy]

I expect there are 100s of different routines.  I was told here that the masked stretch was for use on linear images to move them to the linear side... that being said I have used in on nonlinear images with some success... I went through a phase of doing this. 

The two techniques that I as a novice find most useful is from some of the tutorials you can use masks to cover the bright stuff and then darken the background without worry... many techniques to do this but would star with an extracted luminosity image from a stretched frame.  The other one is to repeat some noise reduction between the stretches... you will see the histogram move right and then you can clip safely some more...

I am finding the tutorials out here very helpful:

http://pixinsight.com.ar/en/

BTW, that image looks great to me...