M42 - First LRGB Effort

I literally spent the better part of a day working on this LRGB of M42. Original exposures were L: 10X60s and RGB: 10X60s each. In the end, I had to add a separate Lum layer at 50% opacity to more correctly address a color imbalance and add detail at the core w/PS CS2. I could not separate the Trapezium because I was already maxed on the white level stretch Log(x). Is there a way to resolve this issue?

Anyway, I'm still practicing. Scope used was a Tak TSA102 w/ST2000XM and Atik CFW

Cheers,
Scott Busby

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Hi Louis and a Merry Christmas to you!
Very nice first effort at M42,you'll need to take some short subs and mask them in for the trap mate.
At the moment what your seeing is a saturated core so the data is damaged(clipped)at 60 seconds subs you should be able to save the core f this object.
Try again with your combined raw and this time keep an eye on the histogram on the right hand side and make sure the line doesn't start pushing up the far right of the histogram.
Warren Keller has some excellent free video tuts on his site you could check out they will help you understand clipping the highlights. His web address is: www.billionsandbillions.com