M81 & M82 | Full LRGB + Hα Workflow

In this 25-minute walkthrough I process M81 and M82 — the Bode and Cigar Galaxy pair — through a complete LRGB plus Hydrogen Alpha workflow using PixInsight and Photoshop.
This is a practical overview of my personal processing pipeline, not a definitive guide. The goal is to give you a clear look at the decisions I make, the tools I use, and the philosophy behind them — so you can adapt it to your own data and your own creative vision.
What we cover:
Weighted Batch PreProcessing with 2x Drizzle and Winsorized Sigma Clipping, Background Extraction, SyQon Prism noise reduction, BlurXTerminator deconvolution and star size reduction, RGB combination and Spectrophotometric Color Calibration, linear and non-linear stretching, MagentaStars correction, StarNet 2 star removal, Multi-Scale Linear Transform sharpening, Local Histogram Equalization, LRGB combination, Hydrogen Alpha preparation and integration via CombineHAtoRGB, and final finishing in Photoshop including halo removal, curves, sharpening, and star recombination.
My approach throughout is light-handed. Less is more in astrophotography processing, and I would rather show you a restrained, natural result than an over-processed showpiece.
The final output is two versions of the image — a broadband LRGB and an LRGB plus HA version highlighting the dramatic starburst emission filaments in M82.
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