Star Shrink PS Plug in

[swag72]

Just thought I'd bring it to folks attention that Russell Croman .......of Gradient Exterminator fame  ................. has released a new plug in for Photoshop. It's called Star Shrink. You can download it for a free 30 day trial, then you need to pay if you want it after that.

I haven't tried it yet, but thought that it may be of interest to folks on here.

http://www.rc-astro.com/resources/StarShrink/

[Scott]

thanks Sara, I'll have a look when I've got some time

[michaelmorris]

Just downloaded the trial version.  It's impressively quick and at present seems pretty artefact free.  Saying that, I haven't yet tried it on a sta rfield in front of a nebulae.  This early version doesn't yet have a preview function, but I gather this is planned for later versions.

[ollypenrice]

Thanks Sara. This is such an important function that it needs looking into.

(Should help you manage all those bloated stars in your 3Nm Ha filter!  ) You'll get Sirius onto one pixel if you use this...

Olly

[RikM]

I haven't given it a try yet, but from the Ken Crawford tutorial, it looks pretty impressive.

[lensman57]

Thanks Sara. This is such an important function that it needs looking into.

(Should help you manage all those bloated stars in your 3Nm Ha filter!  ) You'll get Sirius onto one pixel if you use this...

Olly

I have been playing with this and it is quite impressive. The Radius slider is the crucial control as it determines how much area around a star is affected. For the entire image and in a busy star field multiple applications with different radii on different layers are required to avoid distortion around the area of the larger stars. It is certainly worth investigating.

A.G

[johnrt]

Well this looks very nice indeed. Just been playing with the free trial and it impressive to say the least.

[steppenwolf]

I too have a had a quick play and it is certainly effective although the 'pinch' distortion does affect surrounding areas - I guess the key to using this is layer masks. Impressive plug-in though and Ken Crawford can certainly use it well as his video shows.

[lensman57]

Excuse the poor quality of the ha image

I too have a had a quick play and it is certainly effective although the 'pinch' distortion does affect surrounding areas - I guess the key to using this is layer masks. Impressive plug-in though and Ken Crawford can certainly use it well as his video shows.

I have done a quick comparison on an Ha capture of the IC 5070. I think that the images speak for themselves. Excuse the poor quality of the Ha image . I targeted the larger stars.

Regards,

A.G