Editing Photos taken with an Olympus TG6

Hello Folks bear with me here and I am looking for some advice

I am looking for any tutorials, books, or anything to help me how to edit these iamges to see the milky way. I also believe I am pushing the TG6 passed its limits. I have been to Baxter State Park in Maine and this past week I was in the Monongahela National Forest. The Milky Way has been amazing.

Well as you can see the photos not so much. I take these in the RAW and use GIMP to edit them. These two photos are the same photos. One is not edited but the other is. I adjusted the X to near zero and the y to near 100 and the Milky way is there.

If I even knew how the edit these at all could I get the results I want. I want to see the Galaxy. It does not have to be a show stopper photo, but good enough where you can see it in the photo.

I'm asking to much from my camera and then my lack of exp in editing?

Thank you for yout time and help











--
Sonder
We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. Thich Nhat Hanh
www.youtube.com/@sonderblogger1772

Can you share a link to the RAW file?

I will see what I can do

Erik I sent you a DM

You are indeed asking a lot from your little camera. I don't think you could have shot it any better, but there's a lot of noise to deal with because of the small sensor - chroma (color) noise, especially.

I'm not familiar with GIMP, but the challenge is the same (not an easy one) - clean up the noise without erasing the stars, brighten up the darker stars without accentuating the noise too much, and balancing the intensity of the brighter stars for a good look. This is with an old (pre-A.I. Noise reduction) copy of Lightroom with an equally old copy of Topaz DeNoise.

The latest version of Lightroom or DxO's A.I. noise reduction would likely do the best with this.




Not the greatest result, but not really all that bad considering the source.

Thank you for your efforts and you went where I thought I was using a decent but simple point and shoot trying to do something amazing. Well its kinda amazing you made is amazing through your efforts. I will remember your kindness and thank you again. I have alot to learn and some day a mirrorless some day ... I need to create a bunch or masks it appears and stack these w/o losing detail. Well again thank you

--
Sonder
We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. Thich Nhat Hanh
https://bourbonfliesandlies.blogspot.com/
www.youtube.com/@sonderblogger1772