BF Hammer
Senior Member
Andromeda Galaxy, I shot this in July. The normal procedure for an astrophotography subject like this is to use software to automatically align and stack a few dozen images which are then flattened into a TIFF. I use RawTherapee and GIMP for the post-processing mostly, but I do have Luminar4 available and I am trying to use it more.
In July I followed my more normal workflow and adjusting to produce this photo.
I came back to this photo, going so far as to do the original stacking step over again. But I decided to instead process the subject and the background separately. I did this by duplicating the image into a second layer and masking the galaxy on the top layer. Now I look at it and wonder if I went overboard, or maybe did not smooth the edges of the mask good enough for a natural looking blend?
In July I followed my more normal workflow and adjusting to produce this photo.
I came back to this photo, going so far as to do the original stacking step over again. But I decided to instead process the subject and the background separately. I did this by duplicating the image into a second layer and masking the galaxy on the top layer. Now I look at it and wonder if I went overboard, or maybe did not smooth the edges of the mask good enough for a natural looking blend?