Initial Digital Development Stretch



Initial very dark stacked color image of M13. The dark background will be stretched to show faint outer stars without over stretching the bright core. Star color will be increased.






Step 1

Break-Point Highlight is set to 7784. If the Break-Point slider is too sensitive for a given image then use the Break-Point Range list to adjust slider sensitivity to match the image.






Step 2

The Background Weight slider has been moved to the left to 0.96462 to even the background. If the slider is too sensitive use the Background Weight Range list box to adjust the slider sensitivity to match the image. The stretch will be adjusted to show faint outer stars and color.






Step 3

Nth Root pre-stretch scale is used with Power = 0.795. As a result background star brightness is increased with an increase of contrast. Very little additional stretch is applied to the core of M13. Color is still compressed and will be addressed next.






Step 4

Red, green, and blue color emphasis are enabled and adjusted to uncompress the star color of M13. The image is now ready for fine color adjustment.






Step 5

Typical smooth histogram of a well stretched image without clipped background.






Final digital development stretched image with color emphasis ready for fine color adjustment.




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