"there is still plenty of noise and I had hoped you would see that and I have come to agree with you that noise should be a little present to add definition.
"
Say what dude? In terrestial images where one wants to create a film like effect I can agree with that. But in digital astro images I think noise is almost always a negative. Of course we have various noise tolerance and a small amount is minimally detractive but there is no substute for long enough total exposure. The battle is always to get enough data despite work, clouds, mechanical and software failures, tracking errors etc etc. Very often images therefore are underexposed and then excessive noise reduction then results in a plastic look. But look at any of Rob Gendlers images. There is no noise and the signal is totally solid and defined and he never underexposes. Virtually none of his images are under 8 -12 hours. A longer exposed image almost always looks way better than an underexposed image. Virtually any image under 6 hours is underexposed. Its difficult to get long exposure times but that is the incovenient truth. It also adds a lot of time to processing the image as well. But the final processing is much more responsive when you have lots of signal. In fact you could almost make a principle out of it. The amount of post processing is inversely proportional to the total exposure time. The longer the total the lesser the post processing required.
"Unfortunately the big stars are what I have been left with from the imaging train. I get a faint reflection back from the reducer on the TSA and that means I get these sort of stars. "
Not sure about QSI CCD window if its antireflection coated which it should be but halos like this are usually from the filters and their lack of appropriate antireflection coatings. If they are coated then next culprit is the CCD window of the camera. Its not the reducer as such, but the fact its a fast system and its picking up a slight error in design in the camera or filters, probably camera. Roland Christen commented on his QSI583 showing halo effects on RHA300 due to the CCD window. The cover slip on the chip also can add to minor haloing. But its usually filters and then CCD window. FLI went through a change on its Microline CCD window due to this problem when they changed suppliers and started having issues. They corrected this.
As I recall you are using Astrodon Gen 11? They seem good in this regard so perhaps CCD window needs an upgrade.
I agree with Mike. The minimum filter is a junk processing tool. Light decon works in moderation. Curves on stars as per Louie Atalas's tutorial works fine too. Otherwise you are better off living with larger stars than shrunk artificial ones.
Greg.