Master Curves and Masks To Make the Best Images

Software like Siril and PixInsight offer many sophisticated tools for editing astro images, but curves and masks remain the most powerful image editing tools at your disposal.
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[@agentdarkboote]

Would love a video where you walk us through doing this on Orion! The high dynamic range makes it challenging to get good contrast in all of the different parts of the Nebula while also not leaving the image looking too flat. I'll give this a try myself though!

[@SKYST0RY]

Sorry, I seem to have missed your reply. Fate was in your favor, though, as I just did a video on Orion, however, it's focus is on bringing out the extreme dynamic range. You may find it useful, though. I didn't find processing Orion needed any masks.

[@fotografiabymiguel]

Nicely explained. Great processing tips as well. Thank you for creating this content.

[@richardchurch4137]

thank you , i think in a hobby where we can make things extremely complicated this has just been a game changer to my images as an intermediate ,just done the lion head nebula and ok it will not win any awards but i am more than happy with it ..thank you

[@SKYST0RY]

I'm glad it helped. It really already is fairly complicated. Before we got some great AI tools like RC NoiseXterminator and BlurXterminator it was harder because you also had to learn things like deconvolution, but things are simpler now. I am a big believer in keeping it simple.

[@capturethephotons2078]

I have not yet used Pleadies Pixinsight. Does anyone think Photoshop, with its over 30 years of software can out preform Pixinsight, or is Pixinsight the astrophotography super software?

[@SKYST0RY]

It has been ages since I used Photoshop, back in the days before they went to their monthly payment scam. There is no doubt PS is well developed but they aren't the leaders they used to be. CaptureOne is better at changing light and color characteristics than PS Lightroom. Affinity Photo has editing features that outperform PS. PixInsight was designed specifically for processing astrophotography. Most astrophotographers I know that use PS do their initial processing in PixInsight then finish in PS. I do the same except I finish my images by compositing them in Affinity Photo. I hope that helps.