[Andy01 (Andy)]

Originally Posted by Eden

15 Euro well spent, IMHO.

I'll have to give it a proper try then, cheers

Originally Posted by Amaranthus

I find in Startools, it is best to create a 'fat star' mask and use "Tighten" in Magic (a few iterations), and then switch to Heal, increase the mask further, and really bump up the sampling. You get quite a nice result with this 2-step process.

Thanks Barry, I'll try that out

Originally Posted by troypiggo

I'm embarrassed you put my clunky PS action in there.

Thanks for posting it anyway Troy, I used it a lot with reasonable results but the cloning afterwards was taking too long, hence the question.

Originally Posted by RickS

What works for me is a carefully tuned star mask in PixInsight

Thanks Rick - Guess I'm going to have to bite the bullet and delve into Pixinsight soon

Originally Posted by clive milne

Surely continuum subtraction should be on the list as well?

Sorry Clive, ?

Originally Posted by Amaranthus

The biggest problem I typically face is with halos reflected against the nebulae.

I feel your pain Barry...

Originally Posted by Placidus

... it will help understand why said tools are not quite working as expected.

Yes very true, and interesting - but I'm personally just looking for an aesthetically pleasing result that works

Originally Posted by RickS

provided you're going to put the stars back in a narrowband image after processing the colour

Yes exactly, My intent is to replace the NB ones with RGB stars for a more "realistic" looking image. But not at the expense of hours of time and loss of detail data.



Thanks everyone for your input - seems it's a common problem, will be interesting to see what others contribute as well.

Andy