I decided to redo the processing on some of my images. First up the Flame to the Sword.

Pentax K-1

35x150s Unguided

ISO 1600

William Optics Whitecat 51

Losmandy G-11

I thought the original processing had some issues in color balance and detail visible, so I went back and re-did everything from the beginning in Astro Pixel Processor, then finished in Pixinsight and DxO Photolab 3.

I'm still not completely happy with the color, but I think it's better than the purplish mess I had before. I am however much happier with the detail I was able to pull out of the image.

The 1st image was my initial attempt.

The 2nd is the reprocessed version.

I'm aware the core of M42 is very blown out.

Any thoughts/comments appreciated.



1st Attempt A bit too Purple for my tastes



Much better detail, but still not completely happy with the color.

Nice reprocessing. You got a lot of dust. Amazing what reprocessing the same data can reveal. Re the core of M42, I think that with 150s exposures at ISO 1600 it was unavoidable. AFAIK nothing can be done about it after the fact with the same data. But if you get the chance you could shoot some shorter exposures with the same lens and composite them in.

(Btw, the text in your post is very faint on my monitor, like a very light gray color rather than black.)

Thanks for the complement and notice about the text color. Somehow color encoding tags got stuck in the text. I've gotten rid of them so it should be better now.

I think you managed to do a great job pulling more of the faint dust up and bringing out more detail even if the color still isn't right. I'm not sure where things went wrong with the color but for the general orion region I've found that if one develops raw images in rawtherapee and selects auto white balance it will usually do a really good job of figuring it out.

Super-extra-duper like the reprocessed version better. Hmm. M42 in the first one looks very much like my best effort. Too purple, you say? >;-}

If I'm not mistaken, the black point is also much more forgiving on the second, which is probably where some of that detail is coming from. Good one.