Darktable milkyway processing

Software darktable
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This video was really helpful - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4_0mkkSIKo

Here is the raw file - Dropbox - original.CR2 - Simplify your life

Here is my edit - Dropbox - edit.jpg - Simplify your life

I have spent hours reading and trying different options. The video linked above was very helpful. Does the edit look good? Is there anything I or you can do to make it better? I don’t know how to get rid of the halo around the trees and the reddish tinge.

Any suggestions? Thanks a lot!

1 Like
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The pink stars look really strange. Is this from CA of the lens? That might be the wrong lens for this job. However here are some tips. Always shoot with day color white balance.

Natural color

  • Use daylight whitebalance for natural colors
  • To fix WB, start Stellarium to get the B/V value of the star (if you click on the star you find it in the box on top left)
  • Convert the B/V value, just an estimation: https://codepen.io/blaketarter/pen/EjxRMX
  • Adjust the white balance till the star has the right color. Most stars are yellow, just a few are blue.

The milkyway triple

  • equalizer 0; drawn mask around the milkyway (big transition zone); blend mode: lighten; luma work from left to right what looks best and increase those looking good by 2.
  • equalizer 1; same mask as eq 0; chroma channel: work from left to right
  • equalizer 2; same mask as eq 0; blend mode: darken; luma work from the left to the right
4 Likes
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Nice image, I always wanted to take a photo like this.

Here is my version together with the sidecar file, so you can compare my edits with yours in darktable (just duplicate the original image in darktable and use my .xmp for the new one)

original
original.CR2.xmp (8.6 KB)

1 Like
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The lens could very well be not the right one. I used the canon kit lens 18-135. Thank you for the other notes, I will try them out tonight.

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Thank you for your time. I will definitely try it today. :+1: