Again, nice nebula image!
You posted the image of the same area in the past (#226 in 2018). How do you see the difference between that and this new one in terms of the overall quality of the image datum? Frankly the color of the older image looks a bit richer to my eye.
I agree, my last image is literally speaking a bleak representaion of my previous result:
https://nikongear.net/revival/index.php?topic=1992.msg129664#msg129664As I recall I did spend a lot of time with control points on that one to bring out the nebulous colors.
It partly illustrates the difficulty of processing that can sometimes be a bit hit and miss, especially if one is doing fairly quick processing without having too much time available. As DSS/LibRaw does not support Z8 yet (it will process them but colors seems off) I used Sequator for this one, and it seems to be a bit variable with how well it works on individual takes. In addition the star-shrinking in StarTools might be an issue. When I initially edited it I forgot that my computer screen was in night mode and colors sort of looked OK
, but then this morning I noticed it was too dark and replaced it with a brighter version. There are other programs out there, for instance Siril which is also free, but I have not had time to really get into it. The commercial standard used by the more advanced astrophoto users is PixInsight and its many plugins, however it is seems it would take quite some time to master it, so perhaps not so suitable for occasional use.
In the same imaging session I did a very short test on the area in Cygnus from the deep "valley" around the Sadr to the Crescent Nebula (lower right) with only 9 minutes total integration time, also processed in Sequator, and was very surprised how useful the result was without too excessive noise levels. For both the Veil Nebula and this test I used the 300 PF. The purpose of the test was to perform a comparison of the PF flare around Sadr, which is the worst I have gotten on any star - there is something about the wavelengths in combination with the brightness of that star. The image is somewhat cropped down from the FX frame. The only further processing was a moderate stretch and background level adjustment and minimal color correction in CNX2. (I also did a similar test with the 500PF right before that, but sort of screwed up by not realising I had the Z8 in DX mode -small version provided below, ca 22min integration time).