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?

0 comments

0 Comments

No comments yet

Be the first to share your thoughts on this discussion.