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Talked to a guy who processes Hubble data for a living and he convinced me that color in space photos is way more subjective than I thought
He said every nebula image you see is basically a creative choice about which wavelengths map to which colors, and that hit me because I always assumed those shots were straight out of the camera, so has anyone else felt let down after learning how much post-processing goes into these pictures?
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karen_perry385mo ago
That thing about "creative choice which wavelengths map to which colors" really got me too. I always thought those gorgeous Hubble shots were just what the telescope saw, but now it feels like someone's picking a filter for Instagram. Makes you wonder what space would actually look like if you were floating right there.
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danielr945mo ago
Right? So we're basically getting the space version of a heavily filtered selfie. They're out there picking and choosing which invisible light to make red or blue. It's like, sure, the science is cool, but I bet if you actually floated up to the Pillars of Creation it just looks like a slightly glowing dust cloud. Probably way less dramatic than the press release. Just a big fuzzy blob with some faint purple haze. Guess that's why they pay people the big bucks to color it in.
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