Color balancing techniques

Now that we know how to change the colour balance, how do we know what to actually set it to?

The goal of color balancing in astrophotography, is achieving an accurate representation of emissions, temperatures and processes. A visual spectrum dataset should show emissions where they occur in the blend of colours they occur in. A narrowband dataset, equally, should be rendered as an accurate representation of the relative ratio of emissions (but not necessarily with the color they correspond to the wavelength they appear at in the visual spectrum). So, in all cases, whether your dataset is a visual spectrum dataset or a narrowband dataset, it should let your viewers allow to compare different areas in your image and accurately determine what emissions are dominant, where.

There are a great number of tools and techniques that can be applied in StarTools that let you home in on a good colour balance. Before delving into them, It is highly recommended to switch the 'Style' parameter to 'Scientific (Color Constancy)' during colour balancing, even if that is not the preferred style of rendering the colour of the end result, this is because the Color Constancy feature makes it much easier to colour balance by eye in some instances due to its ability to show continuous, constant colour throughout the image. Once a satisfactory colour balance is achieved you should, of course, feel free to switch to any alternative style of colour rendering.