Thanks, Mike, I'm glad it was helpful (if too fast!). I think I scrapped the hour long original screencast, unfortunately.
Tell you what, if you want to host your raw data or master frames somewhere (I use Dropbox), I'd be happy to try a recorded run-through using your actual data. I'm not sure what kind of results I'll get, but I'll run it through one of the 'normal' process runs. That way, you can follow along exactly and then modify it to your own liking.
Let me know if you're interested, I'm at rootlake AT gmail.
To your finer point, yes, a discolored background with gradients is pretty normal, at least for data I've worked with. These can come from non-perfect flat fields, sky glow and light pollution, and other issues. That's the beauty of ABE and DBE in PixInsight -- they model the background variations very well and then remove them beautifully. It's always my second or third step.
