Milky way image development using Raw Power

[Erik Brammer]

Hello fellow Raw Power users,

Has someone already used Raw Power to develop images of the Milky Way? So far I have played around with some settings in the raw settings such as raw sharpen and color noise, regular sharpen, definition, lighten and possibly even the curve. But I would be glad to receive some advice on best practices.

Thanks,
Erik

[Nik Bhatt]

Hi Erik,

One RAW Power user I have interacted a lot with does a lot of astrophotography, but he uses dedicated software that does focus stacking. I will ask him if he has any suggestions for you, though.

[Erik Brammer]

Hi Nik,

Thanks, that would be a great starting point.

Best regards,
Erik

[andrecajolais]

Hello EriK,

It is me that Nik is talking about… I am observant he sky for about 30 years, but doing astrophotography for only 2 years now… I am quite new to it. I haven’t used RP that much to develop raw images… I mainly use more specialized apps… but I use RP for final touch of my tiff or jpg files. I’d be happy to help… I asked Nik to give you my email in private, and if you are willing, I could give a try to one of your images of the Milky Way… As for most of the software, experimentation is the key…

[Erik Brammer]

Hello André,

thanks a lot for all your help and advice, very encouraging as I played more with my raw images of the milky way. Depending on the original ISO setting and exposure, I have to use different settings in Raw Power, of course.

But my general approach worked as follows: Reduce Boost and Block Boost to 0.5, Luma and Color Noise pretty much all the way up, Raw Contrast to 0.5. With some images I used Definition and Deepen. Then Sharpen in the lower section to 0.5. Finally, I would typically apply a curve with lowering the shadows further and lifting up the curve in at 50% such that everything from 20% up would be lift above the diagonal. That would give the milky way and all other stars quite a bit more contrast. I accept the resulting artefacts in other parts of the image. That’s the price for not using stacking and special software packages to process those images.

In case anyone is interested, I can send a raw image plus a screen shot of my settings so you can replicate the process and see the results.

Best regards,
Erik

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