Stop boosting contrast on galaxy photos, you're erasing the arms

I keep seeing edits in this thread where people crank the contrast slider to make spiral galaxies pop, and it's destroying the faint outer arms. Last month I processed a M51 shot and realized my first pass made the tidal tails invisible, just gone, because I pushed the black point too hard. I only caught it when I compared my stretch to the raw stacked data and noticed the difference. If you're using Photoshop or Siril, check the histogram before you touch curves, faint detail lives in those lower pixels. Has anyone else had to redo a whole edit after spotting this mistake in their own work?

1 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

1 Comment

the_avery23d ago

man I felt this in my soul. did the same thing with my M101 data last year, cranked the contrast because the core looked so clean and punchy, then a buddy asked where the outer arms went and I just sat there staring at my screen lol. went back to the stacked file and sure enough all that faint stuff was sitting right there in the shadows the whole time, I just buried it. now I always stretch super gently first and save a copy before I touch anything, because once you crush those low pixels there is no getting them back. sucks redoing hours of work but at least you caught it on your own before posting, that comparison trick with the raw stack is a good habit.

8