Processing H-alpha disc images using Photoshop
- Aligned everything with Registax (usually stack 100 frames, resample with Mitchell at 1.5), no wavelets- save as 16 bit TIFF.
- Open ImagesPlus
- Go to Restoration > Iterative Restoration > Adaptive Lucy-Richardson
- Everything as default, 20 iterations
- Save as 8 bits TIFF
- Open Photoshop
- Open your image
- Crop the area you want
- Once you've cropped, go to Layer > duplicate layer
- Then go to Image>adjustments>invert Please Note: if your image looks odd after doing an invert, skip this step and go to step G. inverting works best on a low contrast disc detail image as is used in the example!!
- Then go to the layers box and select “difference” as the blend mode
- Then go to layer > flatten image
- Ok now create another layer (layer>duplicate layer)
- Then go to filter>other>high pass
- Set the radius to something like between 5-7
- Then go to the layers box and select “soft light”
- Layer>flatten image again
- Layer >duplicate layer again
- Filter>other>high pass set it to around 3 then in the layer box set the opacity to about 85% and the blend to soft light
- Layer>flatten image
- One last time layer >duplicate layer
- Filter >other> high pass and set it to 1.0 and in the layer box do vivid light, opacity at around 50%
- Layer >flatten image again
- Should have something like this:
To this:
- After colorizing using Image > Adjustments > Color Balance:
Please remember: The numbers I've used are a guide - try your own and experiment! Everyone has their vision of what the sun should look like, so have fun and keep trying new techniques!
This method is a collection of various solar and lunar processing methods I picked up. Thanks to Hiram Villarreal and Tony Gondola for the inspiration for these techniques.
Cameran Ashraf 5-18-06
