DBE - Is the "cheating"? Why?

[Robert Q. Kimball]

I just tried an experiment with DBE with some success. I wonder if I'm cheating.  First let me say I'm looking for pretty images rather than "scientific " images.

I have been working on a 6 panel mosaic of the Blue Horse Nebula.  There is a lot going on in this area.  After I crop an image, I usually run DBE because I have a lot of light pollution to contend with.  It was hard to see exactly where the samples should be with all the faint nebulosity present.  This is when I hit on my new approach. 

I downloaded a wonderful image (borrowed) of the region and cropped it so that it matched my image almost perfectly.  I then moved the image to Photoshop and resized it so that it had exactly the same pixel size as my image.  I then reloaded my borrowed image and did a DBE.  Because the borrowed image was so good, I could very easily see where the DBE sample points should be.  Once I had my samples placed, I dragged the process icon to my desktop and closed the "borrowed" image.  Finally, I dragged the DBE icon on to my image.  The results were very nice.

I'm posting this to see if my use of a "borrowed" image to set up the DBE samples was sort of cheating. 

[dld]

I do exactly the same thing 

You don't need Photoshop, just StarAlign the light-pollution-free image against your integrated image!

[pfile]

yeah some of us have been doing this for years 

another thing you can do is just start with a bogus DBE on your own image - without worrying so much about whether you're on signal or background. that will probably reveal enough of what's going on in the image. you can then place samples on the temporary image, save the process icon, and then apply that icon to the original image. just make sure to adjust the threshold to be relevant to the original image.

rob