#GIMP TUTORIALS SELECTIVE COLORIZATION HOW TO#
#GIMP TUTORIALS SELECTIVE COLORIZATION SOFTWARE#

I wanted to focus on boosting the colors of the areas of pink hydrogen inside of the spiral arms, without oversaturating the blue areas of the galaxy. If you globally increase the saturation of your astrophoto, you run the risk of intensifying noise, color-mottling, and other nasty surprises hiding in your data.įor example, in my image of the Whirlpool Galaxy shown below.

In a nutshell, you need to carefully isolate the areas of color that you wish to enhance, and leave the rest of the image alone. The methods of boosting color discussed below are most applicable to deep-sky imaging of nebulae and galaxies, but can also be applied to all forms of digital photography.

#GIMP TUTORIALS SELECTIVE COLORIZATION HOW TO#

How to Boost the Colors in Your Astrophotography ImagesĪstrophotography is a broad term and covers a wide variety of disciplines from wide-angle Milky Way nightscapes, to high-magnification planetary imaging. If you need help with the pre-processing stages of deep-sky astrophotography, be sure to check out my premium image processing guide.įor an overview of this process, please watch my video tutorial on YouTube: The data used in this tutorial was registered, stacked, and calibrated in DeepSkyStacker first. The color boosting methods I describe will work for all color images, whether they are broadband RGB, LRGB, narrowband, bi-color, etc. The example images in this article were captured using a variety of cameras, from an astro-modified DSLR camera to a monochrome CCD camera. I have also found it to be a fantastic start-to-finish image editor, with the help of a few third-party plugins of course.

#GIMP TUTORIALS SELECTIVE COLORIZATION SOFTWARE#

(See the rest of the astronomy and astrophotography software I use). This software includes countless tools to perform the finishing touches on your images. In this tutorial, I’ll use Adobe Photoshop to accomplish our tasks. By exaggerating these colors through post-processing, we can increase the impact of the image. Long exposure astrophotography can reveal the colors of all deep-sky objects and galaxies. The Triangulum Galaxy in RGB (Dedicated Astronomy Camera). The definition of a “true-color” image varies, but the techniques described in this tutorial are generally accepted in the astrophotography realm. I’d like to consider my images to be somewhere in the middle. Some prefer bright, vibrant colors, while others prefer a toned-down “natural” look. The amount of “boosting” is up to you of course. Increasing the saturation of your deep-sky object can bring out the true beauty of your subject, and better showcase the contrasting elements of the nebula or galaxy. I like to call the technique “ selective color boosting“. In this astrophotography image processing tutorial, I will explain an easy way to selectively boost the colors in your image.

Gimp tutorials selective colorization