I knew that my image processing skills are lacking so I finally decided to stop blaming bad images on bad data and to spend some time learning to process images properly.
Here is the original and the reprocessed image of M83 (7.7h exposure, Bortle 7). More imaging details are in my
original post from a year ago.
The new image has been processed in PI following video tutorials from
Harry's Astro Shed (and stacking instructions from
Light Vortex Astronomy).
This is my first complete processing attempt in PI, done step-by-step while watching Harry's videos and taking notes for the future. I would say there is plenty of room for improvement with more skilled hands.
Hope you like it
Luka
P.S. This is in no way comparison between StarTools (original image) and PI (new image).
edit: Added another image with boosted saturation. A significant improvement again thanks to the comments