luminance masking


Updating an Old Favorite

Back when I was selling prints of my astrophotos, the Pleiades/Subaru image was my best seller, even though it was done long ago – when my skills were significantly less developed.  And since it is well positioned in the sky now, I decided to shoot it again and use more sophisticated processing. The problem with the original version is that the very bright stars are “blown out” – just large white blobs.  Getting them to look more like pinpoint stars requires shooting some much shorter exposures in addition to the long exposures needed to get the faint dust.  The trick […]