M51
M51
Comments
Hey Simon. Is it based on the full 10h 10 min bundle, which is also the June's competition (in which case you've missed out on tagging it accordingly). Just looking at the photo, which I think overall looks good, you do have noise left in few places and for the most part of the background. Have you tried using different techniques/software like NoiseXTerminator, or Topaz Denoise AI, or Topaz Photo AI, and BlurXTerminator or Topaz Gigapixel on the galaxy part. You could have separated the galaxy and background and stars part into separate layers as well and process them differently to your liking.
As for bright, Photoshop (and I assume Affinity Photo) can selectively boost white, highlight and so on, just create a mask for the parts you think should be brighter. This is the sort of tips I can give you based on how I worked on my version of the same bundle (you can search in the gallery for my name), and others can share their experience as well.
Also you only list Affinity Photo in Processing, so I assume no alignment/stacking from PixInsight? That would have contributed also to detail and colors and sometimes brightness. PixInsight is not cheap though... took me a while before I decided to buy it. It does have a reasonably long trial (40 or so days) if you want to give it a try,
Hope this helps.
Also I just checked all your other photos, they are awesome, you're a great astrophotographer, so maybe I shouldn't be giving you advice :) Maybe it should be the other way around.
Thanks very much for your comments. I stack using SIRIL or AFFINTIY PHOTO but Siril gave very poor results with this one. I am using the trial only version of TOPAZ at the moment but the price is putting me off! The same goes for PIXINSIGHT but I may do the trail and see how I get on! Thanks again
Oh and I thought I had no chance at the competition with this one so I didn't enter :-)
Topaz often put deals out there, try and search, and the best price you get is with their photography bundle (I think it's called Image Quality Bundle), don't go for individual prices. Lots of people report LOYAL30 to be currently a valid promo code that gives 30% off discount, see if it works for you. Another code that may work is PICTURECORRECT which gives 25% off. FYI, none of those are referral (from me) links, just searched online now.