3 QUICK TIPS
▲ ▼ Screenshot 2: under the ‘Colour’ menu, the ‘Vibrance’ submenu allows us to increase colour saturation by adjusting the ‘Saturated Tones’ slider
Leave ‘Noise Reduction’ sliders until last and concentrate on the details in your image first.
1.
Gone too far? Undo your adjustment by clicking the curved arrow next to the slider (see Screenshot 3).
2.
Make very small adjustments with the sliders and keep an eye on the ‘Navigator’ window as you do so.
3.
and tone to be edited separately. In ‘Tone Mapping’, increase the ‘Gamma’, ‘Scale’ and ‘Reweighting Iterates’ sliders, before moving the ‘Chromaticity’ slider under the ‘L*a*b Adjustments’ submenu.
Now details are starting to emerge, but the nebula’s colour could do with more of a boost. To do this, scroll back up and click on the ‘Colour’ menu. The ‘Vibrance’ submenu allows you to increase colour saturation in the image by moving the slider for ‘Saturated Tones’ (see Screenshot 2, below, top).
Scroll back up again to the main menu icons and click ‘Advanced’ to see its submenus. A useful application in ‘Advanced’ is the ‘Wavelet Levels’ submenu, which will enhance details in an image if used carefully. Decreasing the ‘Strength’ by moving its slider to the left, and increasing the ‘Wavelet Levels’ will improve the nebulous detail within the image; remember to do this with ‘1:1’ viewing mode activiated.
Finally, move to the ‘Detail’ menu icon on the right-hand side of the screen, where you’ll find the ‘Noise Reduction’ and ‘Impulse Noise Reduction’ submenus (see Screenshot 3, below). Both need to be viewed in ‘1:1’ to see adjustments clearly. The ‘Luminance’ and ‘Detail recovery’ sliders perform significant noise reduction, getting rid of unwanted artefacts, but need to be handled carefully to avoid losing detail or structure in the nebulae. Then, once you’re happy with the adjustments, click on the ‘Save’ icon at the bottom left of the screen.
RawTherapee has plenty of other functions worth investigating and taking time to explore. Our final Horsehead image (see opposite, top right) came out clear, with bright objects like star Alnitak (Zeta (z) Orionis) and the Flame Nebula both well handled.