So I've reprocessed all of my images from my Unistellar eQuinox 2 and (the few I have so far) my Seestar S50.
Overall I'm really pleased. But in churning through all the different objects, and using the experience to get adept at PixInsight (honestly, it's not nearly as hard as some people make it out to be), I find myself uncertain about "the right way" to approach stretching.
The tutorlals I read have you do the Histogram Transformation with the Screen Transfer Function, and after that use Arcsinh stretch to clean up:
1. Hit the "fallout shelter" button on the STF popup, then apply it to the HT.
2. Futz with the Shadows/Midtones values to get (something that's supposed to be what you want) and save.
3. Go into the Arcsinh Stretch to clean up.
... and that works. BUT:
a. When you get the STF application, there's always cruft, noise, background that you want to remove. At the same time you want to get a good contrast profile of your DSO (or for things like nebula capture the faintest parts without dragging in the background).
b. So that means futzing. What I can't quite figure out is this:
1. Should you futz with Midtones first and THEN Shadows, or the other way around?
2. Either way - if you're going to go to Arcsinh afterwards, what should you be trying to achieve before that step? In other words, how much "cruft" should you be attempting to get rid of in this first stretch pass?
2a. Sometimes I've gone for "get rid of as much cruft as possible" but then the Arcsinh black point is really 0.0 or very close to it, so that seems to make it not very effective.
2b. Sometimes I've done the midtones first to remove cruft and then shadows to bring out the object just until I start to get background.
2c. Sometimes I've done shadows first, let the background be bright and somewhat uniform then use midtones to bring it back down
2d. Sometimes I've saved things with a non-black, but somewhat uniform background and then let Arcsinh use a higher black point.
No matter which of those I do, I get "something" but I'm always wondering if I'm just poking arbitrarily, unaware there's a "right/better/more consistent" way to approach it. Of course it's unlikely that a single strategy will work for EVERYTHING, but I'd like to be more consistent on approach and "master" the process wisely.
So - any advice would be greatly appreciated.
(Another issue is that I'll get things looking nicely on my Mac with the great internal monitor and if I drag an image to my ex-TV-lets-use-it-as-a-second monitor, background artifacts reappear and things generally look crappier. I mean I know WHY (the ex-Tv just isn't as nice), but if there are ways to improve the stretching/cleaning up to mitigate that - all the better!)
Overall I'm really pleased. But in churning through all the different objects, and using the experience to get adept at PixInsight (honestly, it's not nearly as hard as some people make it out to be), I find myself uncertain about "the right way" to approach stretching.
The tutorlals I read have you do the Histogram Transformation with the Screen Transfer Function, and after that use Arcsinh stretch to clean up:
1. Hit the "fallout shelter" button on the STF popup, then apply it to the HT.
2. Futz with the Shadows/Midtones values to get (something that's supposed to be what you want) and save.
3. Go into the Arcsinh Stretch to clean up.
... and that works. BUT:
a. When you get the STF application, there's always cruft, noise, background that you want to remove. At the same time you want to get a good contrast profile of your DSO (or for things like nebula capture the faintest parts without dragging in the background).
b. So that means futzing. What I can't quite figure out is this:
1. Should you futz with Midtones first and THEN Shadows, or the other way around?
2. Either way - if you're going to go to Arcsinh afterwards, what should you be trying to achieve before that step? In other words, how much "cruft" should you be attempting to get rid of in this first stretch pass?
2a. Sometimes I've gone for "get rid of as much cruft as possible" but then the Arcsinh black point is really 0.0 or very close to it, so that seems to make it not very effective.
2b. Sometimes I've done the midtones first to remove cruft and then shadows to bring out the object just until I start to get background.
2c. Sometimes I've done shadows first, let the background be bright and somewhat uniform then use midtones to bring it back down
2d. Sometimes I've saved things with a non-black, but somewhat uniform background and then let Arcsinh use a higher black point.
No matter which of those I do, I get "something" but I'm always wondering if I'm just poking arbitrarily, unaware there's a "right/better/more consistent" way to approach it. Of course it's unlikely that a single strategy will work for EVERYTHING, but I'd like to be more consistent on approach and "master" the process wisely.
So - any advice would be greatly appreciated.
(Another issue is that I'll get things looking nicely on my Mac with the great internal monitor and if I drag an image to my ex-TV-lets-use-it-as-a-second monitor, background artifacts reappear and things generally look crappier. I mean I know WHY (the ex-Tv just isn't as nice), but if there are ways to improve the stretching/cleaning up to mitigate that - all the better!)
