The Straight Wall

This is a 100% crop of the Rupes Recta (the straight wall) from February 12, 2011 made with my 7D and 400/5.6L lens + 2X + 1.4X extenders.

Bill i see the wall but your editing looks a tad-bit over done , maybe it's the Sharpening or Softening , can't put my finger on it . Can you post the original unedited one also ?

Celestron wrote in post #12064312
Bill i see the wall but your editing looks a tad-bit over done , maybe it's the Sharpening or Softening , can't put my finger on it . Can you post the original unedited one also ?

I agree with you, Ron. I think there are several issues. The two main issues are --

1. I up-sized the image and sharpened more than normal.
   
2. something seems to be going on with PBase compressing my image files. This is something that seems to have started just recently and I noticed it when I uploaded a moon image a couple weeks ago and the uploaded version was very posterized compared to what I uploaded.

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I messed with this one a little and best i can tell you is don't sharpen it but convert to grayscale and do filters>other> use "1" "-1" in the scale then do filter>noise> "1.0" . That seems to give the best for this image without over process . Maybe it's the image size thats keeping you from editing properly . Did you shoot RAW or jpeg ?

Celestron wrote in post #12066522
I messed with this one a little and best i can tell you is don't sharpen it but convert to grayscale and do filters>other> use "1" "-1" in the scale then do filter>noise> "1.0" . That seems to give the best for this image without over process . Maybe it's the image size thats keeping you from editing properly . Did you shoot RAW or jpeg ?

The original images are RAW. I went back and reviewed the whole series of images and found that focus was slightly soft with a bit of atmospheric haze that may have contributed to image softness. Even though I did not touch the focus after setting it up, I found that there was considerable variation in sharpness from one image to the next. Also, these images were shot in the middle of the DFW metroplex so I suspect that there could have also been some atmospheric instability going on. Most of the images were underexposed by about one stop so that also brought the noise up slightly in post processing. Normally, I do not apply any luminance noise reduction in my moon images because there is a very fine line between removing noise and removing actual image detail. Finally, I believe that I missed the best time to photograph the straight wall by about one day. My main objective that night was to see how well the 7D could perform with the lens and extenders that I used. That question was answered to my satisfaction a few weeks later on March 10.

I am not clear about what filter you are talking about since there are four filters in the "other" menu. If it is the custom filter, which parameters are you referring to?

Bill Boehme wrote in post #12067937
I am not clear about what filter you are talking about since there are four filters in the "other" menu. If it is the custom filter, which parameters are you referring to?

I'm refering to Filters>Other>Custom , Scale = 1 , Offset = -1 . The Offset i may adjust between -1 and -5 . -5 seems to really darken the background so i tend to stay in the -1 to -2 range . If i use this filter then usually i do Filters>Noise>Median or Despeckle (which ever tends to remove noise best without softening the detail) . Also if i use this filter i rarely will use the USM afterwards within the image . I will lots of time go back and forth between these two filters to see which one will give me best sharpnest without burning edges more than is needed . Depending the settings for USM i find it burns edges more depending the image .

Ron, In your custom filter dialog, what do you have in the matrix area. Mine (default) is a 5 surrounded by four -1's and it's certainly not improving the image. Should this be blended somehow ? I suspect that you are taking something for granted that I haven't set or seen.

Steve.

SteveInNZ wrote in post #12070754
Ron, In your custom filter dialog, what do you have in the matrix area. Mine (default) is a 5 surrounded by four -1's and it's certainly not improving the image. Should this be blended somehow ? I suspect that you are taking something for granted that I haven't set or seen.

Steve.

Steve , i'll have to check when i get home , it's probably default cause i just installed it on a new computer about a couple weeks ago and haven't made any changes . But i'm using PS7 so there maybe a slight difference from yours . Aren't you using a CS version of PS ? But honestly i have used this filter off and on for about 5 yrs. and in large images such as RAW at 4778x size you actually will see less of a change but i won't use it on a small jpeg cause it can really make it look pixelated . I'll usually take a RAW or large jpeg image and zoom in at 66% and test it but never at 100% then i zoom back out and see if it has caused pixelation at the edges . But after i do use it i will use a median filter at #1 or #2 but never higher or noise despeckle at a couple notches . . Sometimes it will seem like contrast has been raised slightly without burnout . Then i may make a duplicate then take the original and undo all filters and try USM and compare it to the duplicated image . I find that USM will burnout edges of craters on the moon easily if your not careful . All in all tho Steve there is very little that can be done to Bills image because these filters work best like i said on larger images hopefully the largest possible .

I've attached a screen grab of what I see with before and during images (plus the filter dialog).
I'm sure you're getting something different from this, which is why I ask.

Steve.

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SteveInNZ wrote in post #12071684
I've attached a screen grab of what I see with before and during images (plus the filter dialog).
I'm sure you're getting something different from this, which is why I ask.

Steve.

Most definitly !! Let me check my settings when i get home tonight and i'll post an example .

Steve i noticed just now you have a -5 in your offset setting . I have -1 . Maybe change your to -1 and see what happens . First image is with Custom Filter , second is with Median filter .

If they don't remove this this is with Gaussin Blurr .

Sorry to hijack your thread Bill.
I get almost the same thing with the offset at -1. Maybe it doesn't work with upside down moons.

Steve.

Celestron wrote in post #12068308
I'm refering to Filters>Other>Custom , Scale = 1 , Offset = -1 . The Offset i may adjust between -1 and -5 . -5 seems to really darken the background so i tend to stay in the -1 to -2 range . If i use this filter then usually i do Filters>Noise>Median or Despeckle (which ever tends to remove noise best without softening the detail) . Also if i use this filter i rarely will use the USM afterwards within the image . I will lots of time go back and forth between these two filters to see which one will give me best sharpnest without burning edges more than is needed . Depending the settings for USM i find it burns edges more depending the image .

SteveInNZ wrote in post #12071684
I've attached a screen grab of what I see with before and during images (plus the filter dialog).
I'm sure you're getting something different from this, which is why I ask.

Steve.

I am using CS3 Extended and the default (I think it is default since I do not recall messing with it unless it was part of a Scott Kelby thing) matrix parameters look like:

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I also have already tried Steve's parameters and a multitude of others -- all with not so good results.

The help menu turned out to be worse than worthless since it doesn't tell you anything other than "plug in integers" -- well, whoop-tee-doo! After all, this is the extended version used by engineers and scientists and it would not hurt in the least to explain what is going on behind the scene such as wavelets or Fourier or Kalman filtering or whatever.

Something that I need to mention is that this part of the image was probably close enough to the terminator that it was darker than ideal. A picture is worth a bunch of words so just to put things in perspective, here is a scaled down version of the image with a box showing where the crop was made. I also revised the post processing in ACR to moderate the contrast and I think that it improved things a bit. I do not recall exactly what I did in Photoshop, but it was minimal.

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BTW, everybody please feel free to post edits of my moon images in this thread. I mainly stopped allowing editing of my images in other forums such as the Critique Corner when it became over run with kids wanting to "play" and show off their utter lack of editing capabilities, not to mention that many of them didn't have the slightest notion what an artistic critique entailed.