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Not sure what Preview mode is maybe you're confused with the ScreenTransferFunction, which doesn't do anything to your image file even when you save it, its purely a temporary levels adjustment to help you see features in the image you are working on.
Maybe you don't understand how to apply changes to an image. in the bottom left corner of process windows is a triangle and a square and sometime a circle. If you make your adjustments just click and drag the triangle over onto your image to do the operation on your image. With STF you can drag the triangle onto the bottom border of the HistogramSretch tool and then drag its triangle onto your image to apply the stretch to your image and it'll remain when saved. beware you'll need to reset the stf after you drag its settings to histogramstretch because then you'll have a double stretch on the screen applied but only the single stretch stored in the image .
yes it can be confusing for most people , its not marketed by anyone as a simple tool for dummies. Its a highly complex and powerful package. Startools is not even in the same league, its more the simple solution. AstroPixel Processor seems to fit between DSS and PI. Once you understand how to use PI's interface like a desktop and how to get an image from it then it becomes very very easy to use for common tasks, its capabilities far exceeds ours so it's not a program you'll outgrow. Dont overreach yourself, tke the time to read and follow various simple tutorials on simple workflows (PI doesnt give you a workflow to follow, it gives you the tools to let you work your own way.) APP has power and some handholding I dont have much experience with other commercial packages but no matter what you use YOU still need to do some learning and put in effort. Some guys here get awesome results with basically just DSS which I never could, But I like PI and APP (PI above all by miles). Good results will always take effort.
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