Bringing out features in an astronomy photo

[Forge]

Hi all,

Very new user of GIMP here. I have been learning bits from youtube videos and some tutorials from here https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/

The reason I started learning GIMP was because of pictures I take from my telescope, that I wanted to enhance. For example I took a picture of the Pillars of Creation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Creation) but I'm struggling to bring out the 3 nebula columns here - https://imgur.com/xSEib3D. 

Is there a way to increase the contrast between just the 3 'pillars' and the rest of the image?

Thanks in advance

[rich2005]

Since you are using a Mac, probably confined to standard Gimp tools (although it looks like the partha version has gmic plugin which has a few more options).

Either way, not getting far with that photograph, nowhere near the wiki photo.

Maybe.
Colours -> Auto -> Stretch Contrast HSV then Colours -> Curves pull the colour up to try and bring out the clouds.
example: https://i.imgur.com/KMvqssl.jpg

There will be other/better ways

[Forge]

(09-24-2018, 08:01 AM)rich2005 Wrote: Since you are using a Mac, probably confined to standard Gimp tools (although it looks like the partha version has gmic plugin which has a few more options).

Either way, not getting far with that photograph, nowhere near the wiki photo.

Maybe.
Colours -> Auto -> Stretch Contrast HSV then Colours -> Curves pull the colour up to try and bring out the clouds.
example: https://i.imgur.com/KMvqssl.jpg

There will be other/better ways

Hi Rich,

Thanks for replying - just to clarify, I obviously don't expect it to be anything close to the wiki photo, just needed those 3 columns to stand out a bit more. And I tried your techqniue of stretching HSV and then playing with colour curves and levels and that alone has made a huge difference! I'm quite happy with that now - thanks very much!

If others have other ways to achieve something similar, please post below. It's really cool to learn this stuff.

edit: By the way, I do have a Windows machine with GIMP as well. What does the gmic plugin do and how will it help here?

[rich2005]

(09-24-2018, 09:22 AM)Forge Wrote: ...snip...
If others have other ways to achieve something similar, please post below. It's really cool to learn this stuff.

edit: By the way, I do have a Windows machine with GIMP as well. What does the gmic plugin do and how will it help here?

The gmic colour curves in particular have more colour options (HSV Lab..), that are applicable to your image.

G'mic has more than 500 filters and maybe only a few of use to you, but you might get a result with a couple of them, boosting colours, getting more contrast.

like this: https://i.imgur.com/Xtx0tFx.jpg

[Forge]

Amazing!

Will give it a go. Cheers.

[nelo]

Here's the link of a guy who wrote some astronomy plugins and scripts.
Maybe that's interesting for you
http://www.hennigbuam.de/georg/gimp.html

[Forge]

Nice, thank you