I always wondered about the true colors of the milky way are? I have seen people process them several different ways but to be accurate I wonder what colors they actually are? You obviously know when you look at it with the naked eye it just looks cloudy or maybe I just have not looked hard enough? Basically just wondering if the processing is just artistic license on color or are there true colors lets say with a telescope?
Processing on the new ones looks great, especially the scorpion one. Light painting is HARD to get it to look natural. I'm decent at it but there are some people who do a really nice subtle job with light painting, certainly less of a pain than doing tons of 5,6,8+ minute long foreground exposures.
So that is a subject of contention, as far as the true colors of the MW. Some people are "purists", then there are some who like to crank up some colors (Michael Shainblum is a good example, you'll see a lot of purples and such in his photos. I love his work, just saying). They say technically it is a sort of pale yellow color, at least the giant clusters of stars right around Sagittarius and the core. I will process each scene differently, but I try to get most of the sky fairly neutral. Obviously there will always be some color in the night sky, but I don't like to go too cool or warm on the WB. David Kingham has a great trick for dialing in the white balance if you search around for it. You're off to a damn good start though