Why does everyone overprocess their star photos until they look fake?

I keep seeing these shots in the feeds where the nebula colors are so saturated it looks like a video game. I get that stacking helps, but I pulled up a raw single frame I took near Flagstaff last month and the natural color was way more subtle and honestly better. My rule now is if I have to push the saturation slider past 20% in Photoshop, I messed up the capture or the calibration. Does anyone else prefer keeping the noise and faint details over the neon look, or am I the only one who thinks we're losing the real astronomy in the editing?

1 comments

1 Comment

eric_wright779d ago

Ever notice how the same nebula looks totally different depending on who edits it? That's the tell right there, the object itself doesn't change but the data does. I keep my stretch gentle and let the faint stuff stay faint, that way it feels like a photo of space instead of a painting.