M106 (and friends)

DaveGrennan wrote:

carlobeirnes wrote: Dave astrophotography is art you are totally leaving all the science behind. Every adjustment you make in Photoshop is no different than an artist using his or her brush if you are enhancing an image its art. ( I feel an ear bashing coming on :ermm: )

Thats a valid opinion Carl, but I couldnt disagree more. Why not just get a computer to generate the pic from scratch? Why not just paint the picture? I beleive the purpose of astrophotography is to capture the sky as it really is, not what you want it to look like. If you want to be an artist, buy a paintbrush.

But thats just my opinion which (I think) is no more or less valid than any other.

OUCH :pinch:WOW

Dave.

I know little about science and less about art but what I do know is
this that’s one smashing image.
It just goes to show that there no substitute for quality equipment
and processing skills/knowledge.

Well done
Tony

carlobeirnes wrote: Lads maybe I should have reworded my post better there is a very fine line when it comes to astrophotography especially when it comes down to art/science.

No I think what you said was;

carlobeirnes wrote: Dave astrophotography is art you are totally leaving all the science behind

Seriously though its all valid, for example the high pass filtering technique descibed by Don there is very good and is perfectly valid as long as its not taken too far. I've done this but I will apply it to the whole galaxy. What I don't like is where people readily admit to (for example) selectively tweaking the levels in parts of an image and not others to make a feature more visible. To me thats just plain wrong.

[quote="DaveGrennan" post=92972selectively tweaking the levels in parts of an image and not others to make a feature more visible. To me thats just plain wrong.[/quote]

Hmm - that needs to be put into context... I think that if you are trying to point a feature out (and clearly state this when posting the image) its valid from a science point of view because your demonstrating a particular feature:

"Look to the lower right of my image - I've enhance the two faint interacting galaxies so you can see them a bit clearer"

or even

"I've enhanced the asteroid/supernova/variable star in this image because it is dim and you would not otherwise see it"

If I can read between your lines Dave, I would agree totally that someone who passes off an image as "untouched" save for bulk changes to levels, colour balance etc. and it turns out there *are* selective enhancements to portions of the image, then I believe that is disingenuous (unless they just plain forgot to mention the changes of course). I think it is important for photographers of all persuasions to be truthful about their images and if they have made enhancements that could mislead the viewer if the viewer was not told about them.

A recent thread on one of the groups I belong too generated a huge volume of comment. If I recall, someone took an image of a pretty landscape with a moonrise in progress. On closer scrutiny, and believe me, people dug deep, it was shown that the image could not have been taken as a solitary shot - there must have been some layering etc going on - i.e. some fairly heavyweight manipulation.

The point I'd make though is that when I saw the image, it really was stunning but with no commentary by the imager. On reading the thread, I had a feeling of being cheated and hoodwinked. Which for me, took the pleasure out of the image and would certainly make me think twice when viewing similar images by that imager - "I wonder what crazy Photoshop stuff he/she did to make this picture look like it does".

Once more though, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and even these manipulated images can look amazing (think of some of those artist impressions of extrasolar planets) but at least be honest with the viewers about the image's provenance.

Interesting discussion.

Dave