Since I’m isolating with a 2nd round of COVID ( First time was Dec 2022 and yes unfortunately it’s still active in our community) I decided to re process my Carina image which did provide some subtle improvements. Star color is more uniform with red / blue outer halos now reduced / removed on small to medium size stars. Spatially Variant PSF Deconvolution ( SV Decon ) did work better this time than basic Synthetic mode and provided more detail in the smaller structures plus coalesce the smaller stars to visibly improve the whole star field. Also a slight improvement in contrast and brightness in the final image.
For those who use Startools ( I’d guess most folk use APP, PS and Pi etc… ) here’s my basic workflow for this reprocess
Startools V1.8
Compose L + Synthetic L from RGB
Exposure Sliders ( weighting)
Sii 9720 sec
Ha 11400 sec
Oiii 9270 sec
AutoDev for initial inspection
Bin 72% scalable
Crop edges ( final size 4200 x 2600 approx )
Wipe gradient removal , NB dark anomalies 2 pixels
AutoDev ( final global stretch ) default with Ignore fine detail 2pixels ( no ROI )
Contrast default with reduced shadow detail size 2 pixels
Sharpen default
SV Decon sampled ( 8 samples ) iterations 12 , increased de ringing parameters to soften coalesced stars in white nebulous areas ( sort of worked ok )
Superstructure brighten gamma 0.25 Power of inverse 100% linear brightness mask
Color SHO preset using following matrix ….
SHO 50Sii+50Ha,50Ha+50 Oiii, 100 Oiii
Adjusted saturation and bias to taste
Shrink used Tighten, iterations 10 , Color taming 10 pixels , halo extend 2 pixels
De Noise 4 pixels
Save
Link to Astrobin for full resolution……
https://www.astrobin.com/3ja33k/
Comments welcome
Thanks for looking
Clear Skies
Martin