I have a
shot here that illustrates very clearly the point I'm trying to make. It's a timed animated GIF file. It will flip after a couple of seconds. There's nothing flash about this pic. It's a failed attempt to do some Ha from my light polluted backyard on the Xmas tree/cone nebula.
Never happened. Not one for the burbs. Too faint. Anyway I had a crack at it using that star removal method. Have a quick look at the before and after shot. Even if you tweak the levels in the original I started from you’ll see that it’s hard to get the contrast of the final. It obviously has some sharpening artifacts as the data was so poor to start with but you can see the technique has its advantages because without the stars in the way you can focus your processing on the nebulosity. It's easier from a user's point of view.
Here's a link to the procedure I used.