Orion Nebula WITHOUT a Star Tracker, Part 2a - DSS and GIMP

[@PaoloStivanin]

Seeing someone making a video about postprocessing with GIMP is such a rare thing nowadays! As an OSS supporter (and long time user) I must say thank you very much for this video :) This is highly appreciated, please keep up your fantastic work and the use of OSS !

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thank Paolo! Yes, I am definitely an OSS supporter (if not a purist). Clear skies, Nico

[@rbnye]

Really a great resource 1 and 2b (since I use Gimp). Made the pre and post processing very clear and added ideas I hadn't considered. Thank you for taking all the time to put this (and your other videos) together. Will be adding you to my Patreon donations

[@stuboyle666]

Nico, keep up the great work. What you are doing is way more informative that what I'm getting from other astro channels.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Glad they are helpful Stuart! Clear skies, Nico

[@felipefonseca1212]

You can’t even imagine how much this has helped me! I only have a DSLR and was waiting to get a tracker and telescope, but now I’m gonna try getting my own images right away or process your samples. Thanks again!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Glad it was helpful Felipe! Clear skies, Nico

[@A_B_Ph]

Such an amazing and perfect tutorial! As a total beginner I really appreciate this approach. Thank you for your outstanding lessons.

[@jimcraig8754]

I did a test of this technique by taking some images the other night. I live under Bortle 8 skies and the moon was over 80% full. I took only 105 light frames because Orion was starting to set behind a tree. Even with all these obstacles, I am still completely blown away by the results. I can't wait to get under some dark skies to try this again!

[@NebulaPhotos]

That's what I like to hear Jim! Stay safe and clear skies, Nico

[@ckastronomy2920]

One of the most useful astrophotography tutorials ever. Following along with a 18-55mm kit lens & old canon 550D dslr. Hoping the result will come out well.

[@ckastronomy2920]

ISO 1600. 1534 lights, 224 flats, 147 dark, 174 bias, 31 dark flat.

[@ckastronomy2920]

Windows 8

[@ezrayarmush554]

An alternative to the gradient removal by using a gradient is to blur a duplicate layer (gaussian blur) by a few hundred pixels, paint out any stars, then blur it again and use subtract blend mode. Works like a charm!

[@JorgeDavalosBravo]

Thank you very much for processing it in PS, PI and also in GIMP... Excellent work !

[@angelsalas7884]

Awesome video and very well explained. I'm just starting with astrophotography (2 weeks ago I bought a DSLR camera) and your videos are helping a lot.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Glad it was helpful Angel! Clear skies, Nico

[@onionboy7461]

Just found the first part today and now part II. Big thanks! Gonna try it out asap

[@NebulaPhotos]

Awesome! Let me know how it goes. Clear skies, Nico

[@laurenwade4770]

Thanks Nico. I have tried to take Orion photos before and not got anywhere near the results I wanted. Tutorials are so often in Photoshop which I don't have, so you try to get the software you have to do what is described. This time took 900 x2 second exposures with my 100 mm macro on a Canon 70D. The Orion nebula can clearly be seen in single exposures, much better with multiple. Thank-you for taking the time to do your videos in multiple formats.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Glad it was helpful Lauren! Clear skies!

[@Bazzasphotolife]

Fantastic contribution. Thanks so much for these tutorials. Can't wait to try it!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Glad they were helpful! Clear skies, Nico

[@haythemhamdi3995]

Great video very very helpful never thought I could process a deep sky image without using Photoshop and spend that money at least for now I just processed my first deep sky image of Orion thank you for this great video.

[@luizbertini5458]

Thanks a lot for making this video. I learned a lot with you and certainly my astrophotographs got much better.

[@mabdinur85]

You should give Siril a whirl as an alternative to DSS. It has a batch processing scripts that you can do stacking with a single action.

[@mabdinur85]

Plus it has advanced tools that remove gradients, does photmetric colour calibration, does excellent wavelet noise reduction. It's a free open source software btw.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks Mohamed! I've been meaning to try it out. Hopefully, I will be able to get to it soon.

[@dannybouchard4140]

Thanks very much for this tutorial. When I play with the levels, my image turns to the red and not grey. Is this normal?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Yes, see my Andromeda videos for a bit on color balancing the RGB channels as you stretch

[@drrach1]

Thank you very very much for this!!

[@sdsparkes]

Please, please repost PT1 of Orion with a DLSR, or the whole video I watched it once all the way through and it was brilliant but to much to take in just watching once. If I’m going to pull this off I’m going to need hand holding and your guide was the most informative I’ve found for someone new to Astro DLSR photography.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Sorry, just a stupid mistake on my part. Here's the new link: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n6awi3pjiN53ebc

[@sdsparkes]

Nebula Photos Thanks 🍻

[@eckebusch]

Thanks Nico, that's exactly what I was looking for. Awesome video. I just started with astrophotography and this video is a game-changer for me as I don't wanna buy photoshop ;)

[@NebulaPhotos]

Glad it was helpful Nico! Clear skies, Nico

[@lordofming]

Great job. If you have a tutor for affinity photo i would be so happy! I did the bias now and someome told me i could do the dark frames by putting my camera.... in the fridge! Not sure that would work! I am still working on Magellan cloud but your tuto already improved my image a lot

[@NebulaPhotos]

Yes, I have done refrigerator darks! It can work if you have a way to measure sensor temperature (I use a paid software called BackyardEOS). I will add Affinity Photo to my list. There are many software packages I still have to try... Clear skies, Nico

[@superchief1171]

Thank you so much for that i use gimp and was wondering for ages how to get rid of light pollution on my milky way image and how to make it show more. Im going to try and apply this tonight.

[@fwempa]

Incredibly instructive. I really had fun tinkering with this .tiff file. Can't wait to take some of my own lights, etc. Do you know of a source of more of these .tiff files to "play/practice" with/

[@matter110]

Hello there! I've started to watch part1, but it disappeared for some reasons...Are you planning to upload it again?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Sorry about that! I mistakenly deleted it in a bonehead move, and had to re-upload. Here's the new link: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n6awi3pjiN53ebc

[@TELeeable]

I'm guessing your camera is astro modded looking at each of the frames having a reddish hue. But how did the stacked image not have any reddish hue? I still am left with a reddish hue after stacking on dss. Any tips?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hello, the camera used here is not modded. The sky can have a reddish hue on its own. Don’t worry about how it looks in DSS. Did you do the background subtraction step in PS? That should take care of it.

[@photonmaster4261]

Hi and thank you again for this amazing tutorial. I find a problem with deep sky staker as I have to lower star detection threshold to 2% which gives me 746 star detected. if i raise threshold to 3% it detects 20 stars only!!! secondly out of 650 light frames it stacks inly 40 frames which waste alot if frames. I am using a sony a7iii attacheched to my telescope with 2x barlow / 650 focal length and 130mm aperture. my setup was Iso 12800 and 4 seconds exposure . i used 60 dark frames / 40 bias and 40 flat. I beleive something is wrong with my exposure settings or ISO or Deep sky stakker settings for not detecting above 100 stars unless I lower the detection threshold to 2% only. Apologies for the long explanation . I appreciate your advice.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hi Basel. Are you using tracking with your telescope? If not, I don't recommend untracked at 650mm focal length. At 4 sec. my guess is your stars are very trailed, Deep Sky Stacker cannot register your shots unless the stars are reasonably round. If you have a camera lens (250mm f.l. or under, and as fast focal ratio as possible) for your A7iii, I would suggest using that instead of the telescope, and use the NPF rule to calculate an exposure time that will result in round stars. Clear skies, Nico

[@photonmaster4261]

@@NebulaPhotos thanks for your reply. Yes my telescope is celestron 130slt with motorized tracking mount . I think it may need a comma corrector as stars at periphery of light frame are comma shape. Looking at the light frames the stars are keeping exact positions in all light frames. Thanks for your help

[@NebulaPhotos]

@@photonmaster4261 Could you send me 5-10 random light frames? nicocarver at gmail dot com

[@foc2241]

Why did you check the best picture as Reference? What does this step do?

[@kevinashley478]

Curious, why is your process for DSS different here vs your video for Andromeda Galaxy?

[@daveshutt8672]

Fantastic really enjoyed and learnt a lot. Well one. Is it the same process when shooting a spiral galaxy. If so which is the best galaxy to do.Keep up the good work and thanks.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hi Dave, Yes, this is just a pretty basic processing routine so it should all apply to galaxies too. The best one if you are doing untracked with a camera lens is definitely Andromeda in N. Hemisphere or the Magellanic Clouds in the S. Hemisphere as these galaxies are in our local group so they appear very large in the night sky. For shooting galaxies with a telescope and mount, M51 (the whirlpool galaxy) is my favorite. Clear skies, Nico

[@jedidiahwest4619]

Sorry, I have a dumb question and I’m waiting for my first telescope to arrive. Is this to recreate what our eyes see through the telescope? In my limited experience I know that most photo’s I take look nothing like what I can see.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hi Jedidiah, Not a dumb question at all. The answer is no. It's not my goal to recreate what we can see in the eyepiece. Our eyes are mostly adapted for daytime vision and have a very fast refresh rate. For this reason, it is very hard to see most colors at night through the eyepiece. Blues and greens are easier than reds. Also, our eyes can't do a long exposure collection of photons like a camera can. If you are interested in recreating what you see in the eyepiece, there are many resources online for how to do astronomical sketching. A very worthy, but different kind of hobby. I haven't tried it yet, but I'd like to some day. Clear skies, Nico

[@ridleyroid9060]

I've taken 618 images of Orion and stacked them in DSS from a bortle 6 zone but whenever I try to process it I can't stretch out the histogram mountain and my entire image looks so red and green and messy, I have 0 clue what I am doing wrong, outside of not being at a true dark sky site.

[@NebulaPhotos]

After a couple stretches try aligning the left edge of the red green and blue color channels while stretching to get rid of color casts. I show how in the Andromeda tutorial here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gWbFaoOMrLh1bLM

[@SquidsGrowHouse]

For some reason when stretching, my image turns "red" instead of a back and grey gradient. Is there something i'm not doing correct?

[@NebulaPhotos]

No, you didn't do anything wrong and that is common. You need to color balance the RGB channels while stretching see my Andromeda Start to Finish for instruction

[@marinebouyoux8603]

Why do you don’t change your RGB balance on dss before created the TIFF? Is it better to not change the results of the stack before using Ps ? Also, I try your technic to shoot orion. I made around 1000photos but I forgot to do the darks, the offset and the lights. The stack at the end is good for me but do we need to do darks,lights everytime if we do a lot of photos? Thanks for your tips 😊

[@marinebouyoux8603]

@NebulaPhotos

[@Splitbrains]

you could've tried Filters → Enhance → Despeckle for the background removal layer... I feel that's where the processing went wrong in GIMP compared to the Photoshop tutorial

[@NebulaPhotos]

Thanks for the tip! I'll try it

[@istvanfreifogel4413]

@@NebulaPhotos i'm using Filters → Blur → Gaussian Blur… (with a big radius) and with the Smear tool i cover the brighter areas. After setting the layer to Subtract, decease the Opacity. This gets me the same result as in your Ps tutorial setting the offset for the 'Apply Image' step. Thank you for taking extra time for a Gimp tutorial!

[@NebulaPhotos]

@@istvanfreifogel4413 Thanks for the tips!

[@herrcay0323]

@@istvanfreifogel4413 I tried that, but the result is very dark and when I lower the opacity, the gradient just shows up again. Anything to do about it?

[@saikattalukder2180]

I live in a bortle 6/7 city. If i capture total data of about 3hrs, will it gonna reveal nebulosity and dusts after stretching? I'm planning to target cygnus region and currently I'm unable to move to any darker location.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Have you done any astrophotography before from this location? I wouldn't start with Cygnus region (difficult and mostly dim emission nebulae). Go after brighter objects like those in the Messier catalog: M42, M45, M31, etc.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Have you done any astrophotography before from this location? I wouldn't start with Cygnus region (difficult and mostly dim emission nebulae). Go after brighter objects like those in the Messier catalog: M42, M45, M31, etc.

[@saikattalukder2180]

@@NebulaPhotos yeah i did but not that significant.

[@Nico-fq5ry]

Did part 1 get deleted?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Yes, it was my boneheaded mistake. Can't be recovered, so I'm re-uploading now. Should be available again tomorrow morning

[@Nico-fq5ry]

@@NebulaPhotos Okay, thanks for the quick response.

[@claromaro]

i tried my first time doing astrophotography (Cassiopeia) but instead of turning grey in gimp it kind of got from dark red to pinkish... Edit: I did everything until 21:40 and when I disabled the Red channel, basically all stars disappeared except the brightest ones

[@NebulaPhotos]

Check out this part of my Andromeda GIMP tutorial for a bit on color balancing while stretching. May help you out. kzbin.info/www/bejne/gWbFaoOMrLh1bLM

[@giovistag360]

Hi, do you think is possible a similar result using lightroom?

[@NebulaPhotos]

After the DSS part, yes, you could do most of it in lightroom

[@giovistag360]

@@NebulaPhotos thanks for the answer! I would like try take andromeda with sony a7ii and 400 6.3,what do you think about? How many time i have to recenter the image during the shots? Sorry for my bad english 😅

[@NebulaPhotos]

@@giovistag360 If it's a zoom lens with variable aperture, I'd suggest lower focal length / brighter aperture. You will actually get a better shot of Andromeda that way. If 400mm is your only option, I'd suggest re-centering about every 30 seconds (around 15-20 photos)

[@giovistag360]

@@NebulaPhotos it is a 100 400 5-6.3

[@NebulaPhotos]

@@giovistag360 I'd suggest setting it to 240mm f.l. wide open (f.5.6) and shoot 1 second subexposures at ISO3200.

[@edwarddavila7831]

Every time I try to stretch the image, mine starts looking red….😓

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hi Edward, This is normal and I should have addressed it in this tutorial. Check out my Andromeda tutorials for how to fix. In a nutshell, you can try one of two things: 1. in Levels, stretch the color channels separately until the red, green and blue channels match up in the left side or 2. use the free program Siril (siril.org) which has background removal and color calibration to fix this issue

[@Surfing_Extra]

JUST MY OPINION: As an astrophotographer myself (intermediate level), I feel qualified to mention this: There is "Astrophotography", and then there is "Computer Graphic Art Design" (CGAD). If ONE single picture is taken, and then posted somewhere after minimal post processing, that is called astrophotography. However, when multiple pictures are taken, and then special computer software programs are utilized to GENERATE a new picture enhanced with artificial color, that is CGAD.

[@SquidsGrowHouse]

I love how you tried to flex, then called his work fake, then came back with a condescending comment like "wElL dOnE". Only thing that's not real is your term "CGAD".

[@igoreq4495]

Are you planning a processing guide for photoshop or have u done it already >.< ?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hello! Photoshop is included in the Part 1 video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gmiudJ2Hn7Oai5Y The photoshop part starts at about 1 hour 14 minutes in. Cheers, Nico

[@igoreq4495]

@@NebulaPhotos Oh okay then 0_o

[@toolan]

Hi, QQ in kzbin.info/www/bejne/n6awi3pjiN53ebc where you did the same thing but in PS, before doing any stretch you have change bit rate from 32 to 16 and I think you have skip this here in Gip. Why?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Photoshop is very limited in 32-bit mode, while GIMP is not.