OK, I will address the elephant in the room......
Pushing 80????? Holy crap! you are doing an excellent job of digital imaging Raymo, even with very short subs! Nice work!!!!
Tell you what, I have sort of figured out how to get a stretched image out of DSS with some colour and nice details with some tweaking, if you Private Message me your phone number I can help you over the phone (as my Australia wide landline and mobile calls are free from my home phone) and I have 20 years experience with helpdesk calls and customers with even less computer skills than you have and I can hopefully get you to save the settings in DSS so that you can repeat the process MUCH more easily than you probably currently do now.
My patience level is quite large, so don't feel like you are putting me out, I would be more than happy to help you out and give you some tips in DSS as I banged my head on this for a number of months and now I think (to some degree) I have cracked it somewhat and can get nice results out of DSS without any further processing being needed to be done.
Let me know by PM, or (no disrespect intended) if you prefer, simply let me know on this thread and I can PM you with my details so you can call me and then I can step you through the loading, processing and stretching process I use in DSS to get more out of a picture than what it spits out when you leave it all at default.
No problems if you don't want to, by the way, the offer is open to anyone else who wants some tips on DSS. I use DSS beta 3.3.3 if you need any help, please let me know here or via PM and I can call you to run you through either over the phone, or via remote control of your PC (safe, don't worry) how to stretch and "minimally process" your pics.
Sometime in the future, I may take the time to write up a quick "how to" article for reference, but in the meantime, my current after work boredom level is enough to allow me to make this offer to anyone who may need a hand.
Cheers
Chris