Open Forum Have At It

[Marc Basti]

I'll post a pic later. Unless somebody has got a pic they were trying to take after a bottle or two of champagne, that would be cool.

[Marc Basti]

NGC1491 I've been working on this here and there. Actually got to just about finish, but I did a pretty close crop and wasn't happy w/it. So this is about maybe 1/2 way in flow, curious what you see for background and which is more pleasing to the palette. The 1st-E2c is 20 21 19 rgb in levels, 2nd=E2d is19 20 20 rgb. The 2nd pic was the resulting balance from GradX. Thanks, Marc

[Marc Basti]

I am also more than happy to take advice on the best way to post things here. Everything (just about) I'm doing here is by the seat of my pants. Thanks, Marc

[Trevor Woodrow]

Love it...the throwing if a chunk of meat into a pack of wild dogs...genius!

First I must confess two things...love your stars...color, size, shape, beautiful. I would add a touch of diffuse glow but that is a personal preference type thing. Second, I downloaded both pics...not sure I did so correctly because they look identical to me, and my viewer is saying that it is only 10x6.72. I mention this because if my scale is off, then I may not be seeing the image correctly.

There is nebula in the surrounding feild. I messed simply with color saturation (increase) and it pops out. Unfortunately when I tried to use curves to do this the results were not as pleasing...and of course any attempt to pull that out highlights that hole just below center. Easy enough to erase. Little sharpness for good measure...very little actually...and avoided too much smoothing in the background, I like a little noise.

Other than that, solid shot. Not sure this is what you are looking for...in fact pretty sure it is not, but hopefully will start some juices flowing. You really need to give us some real crap stuff to play with.

Maybe post some raw data, let everyone work on and then compare everyone's results? That'd be cool, ya think?

[Marc Basti]

Trevor, exactly what I wanted "interaction". First, I have to say talk about like minds, I have/had this fresh out of DSS untouched cut to 19+mb ( halved the image and saved png) lock and loaded on my desktop. I was going back and forth to post what I did or post the fresh img, that's a riot. I didn't know if anybody would want to play w/it, I'll post it. Back to this, one pic has a greenish bckgrnd2d and the other is towards blue/blk (that's on my lapper) curious to see what you see, so good-feedback ( but not sure what 10x6.72 is/means). The nebulosity is kinda weak, would have been better off shooting w/your sbig yours looks the way I got it and like you said once you go curves all H breaks out just not a ton of info there.
Hey on the diffuse glow- I've just in the last few pics (not this one) been messing w/a star select and use vibrance (mild) to kinda get a little boost to the brightness it's interesting as long as you don't go nuts w/it -is this similar to your tech.
Thanks about the stars. I found the best thing to do about star color is don't do anything. By that I mean don't destroy what you have. Go ahead sat and dim etc just don't mess to much w/your white point. If you have a good white balance done in your camera the stars will be be the color they are. This is speaking dslr when it comes to ccd speak you need to tell me how it goes (I'm hoping by this spring-a sing shotcol ccd on my scope). Check out the curves stretch tutor link- I swear by that (for now). One last thing how did you get the pic to show up in this reply instead of an attachment? Marc

[Trevor Woodrow]

LOL...funny this I tried to put it as an attachment and wound up in the body. To do so, just clicked the icon second from the left along the top.

10x6.72? Inches. Sorry.

Not familar with Star Select. Is that part of Carboni? I use diffuse glow in Microsoft Digital Image. Options are as follows: Transparency (95%), Graininess (o), Intensity (20) and Definition (20). Don't know if there is a like tool in other software...even CS2's "diffuse glow" does not seem to do the same thing. That is not what brighten the stars though...again in microsoft there is a "sharpen portrait" option...basically unsharp mask set at 150% contrast, 1 pixel edge width and 8 noise reduction threshold. What any of this means is anyone's guess but I think it makes my pics purdy.

Went back and looked at your backgrounds...cannot see the color diff. Most likely my moniter.

For my color balance...I cheat...plain and simple...I ask CS2 to auto color. If she does not look right I will manually adjust in curves and hue. A lot of trial and error.

[Marc Basti]

The little picture icon next to link. I did that at first and it just printed out like 4 lines that looked like an address. I'll try again. I'll wait and see if Spike puts in M1 to mess with if not I'll put in this one. I should have wrote "do selection on stars in pic" it's just using any selection tool in PS. Carboni does have a "select brighter stars" action which comes in handy sometimes. I don't use C-Tools actions all the time but they are handy to have on hand.
Using GradX does kind of the same thing w/col.bal it's an auto-function that turns on and off. One thing I've see from all these different tutorials out there is that there is about 15 different ways to get to the same endpoint for everything. Marc

[space_jockey]

I have a question for a guru here, how can I upload an animated gif to this site? I am trying to uplaod a live video feed of Jupiter and when I upload it it is just a simple picture with little detail unanimated..

[0c87j7rl1576g]

If you'd like to post an animated video clip, try and upload to youtube first, which will encode for web transport. Then, once you know the video plays there, click on the third icon in from the left, titled 'media'. At that point a window pops up and allows you to be able to embed the video url from YT. At that point, it should appear as a normal post with most likely the first frame as the actual image, as well play button.

Now, this all in theory based upon how other sites work. As I see it, this site should be laid out the same way.

As for animated .gif files, depending on your formatting, that shouldn't be an issue. There are 3 different image formats which the site will accept: .gif, .jpg, .png - other than that, .tiff, etc won't come through. But like I say, with .gif files, it's most likely a trick of formatting properly for page translation and rendering.

Hope this points you in some direction. I'll look in to it more once I get a chance to experiment with the video and .gif option myself.

I do know we can upload .gif files because in one of the discussion forums, there is an animated globular cluster .gif file at the top of the page. That should indicate that it functions. we just have to figure out how to get your image working right.

-mb

[space_jockey]

I can try to post is as a simple html code..

[0c87j7rl1576g]

well, there you have it! I just tried to upload one myself and got an error message. It wouldn't allow the upload at all. But, like you've done here, if the link to the image gets pasted, it posts. Interesting. Must be a site security implementation. .gifs can be rather dangerous because they allow for the transport of larger bits of code. So maybe Ning doesn't allow them to be uploaded but linked instead. That's a question I'll have to forward to the site techs.

Thanks!

[space_jockey]

It does seem to work, but I am unable to post it to the hosting site any bigger than what I can do now.. it errors out in upload., must be a limit to a gif size, the original was 10 MB, oh well...

[Marc Basti]

Mark, nothing to do w/this thread of discussion, so I didn't want to post in the middle of it, but it has to do w/forum structure. The chronological posts; wouldn't it be better to post the newest posts first instead of opening up to Jan1 posts. I know it would be a bit like reading right to left ie answer before question but after awhile one is going to need to go through pages to get to the newest updates. I know this is structured to deal w/1 topic then close and start a new discussion, but kind of nice just having a free flowing thread of what ever comes up. Any ideas? Marc