The
forum rules don't allow posting images processed with other applications here. However, we are not going to moderate this post because it can be useful mainly for one reason: We should realize that, in general, trying to improve things by comparing the results achieved with different applications is completely useless. This tends to be more true when one has little experience with at least one of the applications. And this is very true when the applications in question are based on completely different paradigms and design principles, as happens with Photoshop and PixInsight.
A "Photoshop vs PixInsight" comparison or challenge won't help you to improve your knowledge. Besides the important fact that this forum is not about Photoshop, showing an image, preferably with sufficient resolution and free from compression artifacts, and asking about the problems and mistakes in the image, is always much more efficient. It is difficult with the snapshots you've posted, but here are a few comments that I hope can help you:
- Excessive noise reduction: washed background, loss of contrast in the outer galaxy arms. Always avoid
noise suppression. Noise is uncertainty in the data, hence it cannot be removed with certainty, by its very nature. We can only dissimulate it with carefully applied noise reduction techniques.
- Excessive and too selective color saturation (more in the PS version). Have you tried to increase color saturation on stars and other small-scale structures, with selective masking techniques?
- In the PixInsight version, color balance is quite correct on the galaxy, IMO. In the PS version there is a magenta cast, probably increased by excessive saturation.
- As is well known, the core of M31 poses a difficult high dynamic range problem. In the PS version, the core is very wrong IMO. Brightness has been reduced locally on the core, in an attempt to solve the HDR problem, but the attempt has been unsuccessful (lack of structure detail, lack of color, masking artifact). I don't know how the original data are, but we have many tools in PixInsight specifically designed to deal with these (and much, much harder) HDR problems. In your PixInsight version of the image, the core is much better IMO, simply because the HDR problem remains unsolved—which is a perfectly valid style decision.
- In the PS version, there are objectionable artifacts around stars. In the PixInsight version you have controlled them much better. Irrespective of this, perhaps you have gone too far trying to sharpen the image, although it's difficult to say this for sure because of JPEG compression.
If you upload an artifact-free version of the image, I am sure other users will offer you much more precise and useful help.
