PixInsight Color Saturation

At this point, our image should be looking pretty good, although the colors might be a bit dull.

This is where color saturation comes in. It allows us to increase the intensity of our colors, as individual channels or as a whole.

Star Mask

At this stage of the editing process, we want to increase color saturation without impacting the star color saturation. In order to do this, we need to have a star mask applied that protects the stars.

To create a star mask, you can either user the Star Mask process or the StarNet process.

Curves Transformation

In order to protect the stars, we need to apply and invert our star mask to our image

Stars Protected

We can now safely use curves transformation to gently increase the color saturation without impacting star color.

After Color Saturation

What’s Next

Color saturation helped improve the overall color of our unstretched image.

Before Color Saturation
After Color Saturation

The next step is leave the linear processing state and permanently stretch the image.