StarTools

[Stub Mandrel]

I'm having a serious go with startools, and though it seems to have some very powerful features, I've found a couple of the 'modules' very difficult:

The wipe tools seems very hit and miss - either I get a decent but small rectangle in the middle surrounded by a fuzzy pale border, or an extremely contrasty image.

I can't get the hand of getting a decent black point - it seems to demand that drop the gamma right down and push develop up in order to get a dark sky background, but this loses faint detail at the darker end.

I'm struggling with the colours.

As an example see below. The top image is a screengrab from startools as I haven't decided to buy yet. Its sharpening and noise control etc. is clearly excellent. The second image is mostly photoshop. The colours are VERY different! The blues are in a completely different place.

I have Read The Flamin' Manual, but to be honest I still don't really understand how the wipe, develop or colours modules work - I'm afraid I'm the sort of person who needs to understand exactly what each control is doing to us them well, but they are so interactive its hard top work out. Is there anyone who can offer some simple guidelines, especially on using wipe and develop?

I'm very much threshing around trying out different packages before I decide which route to follow (and pixinsight is beyond my budget!)

[Knight of Clear Skies]

That sounds very similar to my experiences with StarTools, some of the tools work extremely well while others I've got nowhere with (especially the exposure tool). I work around it by flitting between StarTools and another image editor with a standard histogram adjustment, saving lots of intermediate files.

[happy-kat]

My little dable with StarTools showed I need good quality flats and more subs for data. Because I has neither I had all sorts of artifacts in the wipe and develop tools. The StarTools forum is excellent for support the developer Ivor worked on my image and shared the steps he used. I would suggest you join it and ask for help with this exact image, upload the unbayered stacked image from DSS. It could help you either know what you could get from your image or what is needed to improve it.

I love the ability to grow and shrink blobs it has excellent selection tools.

[Brent]

Like you I've been having a go with StarTools and going over old data whilst the cloud is hanging around.

I've had the same bad experience with the 'wipe' feature - until I realised that the stacking artifacts needed cropping out of the edges of the image. StarTools generally warns you about them when you first load the stack but not all the time I've found!

Once cropped 'wipe' seems to do it's job well.

Below is a screenshot of a workflow, posted by Ivo on the StarTools forum - I find that it works pretty well for me:

I've found that using 'Auto Develop' is the best initial way to see stacking artifacts as it's like a max stretch and you can 'Keep' it to see what you are doing - the way StarTools works, it won't harm your data in any way.

Also, when I come to doing the final stretch I use just 'Develop' and the 'Home In' button (keep clicking it until it settles). It generally seems to give a good stretch without overcooking at all. You can always add more saturation or "pop" after with the relevant sliders.

And below, one I've just done from New Year's morning data, just a low res screen grab as I also just have the StarTools demo at present.

It needs at least another couple of hours of data to get the wispy stuff, but it's just starting to show:

I'm also feeling my way around but starting to get somewhere with it I think!

Hope that helps a bit.

[Stub Mandrel]

Thanks Brent,

I can't understand why I am getting stacking artefacts as I normally use intersection mode in DSS which should clip out any part of the image that aren't from the whole set of subs, but that does appear to be at least part of the problem.

[happy-kat]

I use DSS and crop the image before loading in Startools i got weird stuff if I didn't crop it enough.

[happy-kat]

Strange why did I write that... I open the autosave file from dss into Startools and first action is to crop and then bin. I bin because I am constrained in 32 bit mode.

[The Admiral]

I too have been dabbling with Startools, and like Neil (Stub Mandrel) I like to understand what is going on. That is why I've also been dabbling with Pixinsight, but that has its own set of complexities! I agree with all the above comments, but I think I shall have to spend more time with it. Sometimes I can get a good result with ST, but other times not, and the wipe doesn't always seem to work well, but one does need to crop to get any chance. I would really like to be able to control the black-point better, and the best I've been able to come up with is to use the contrast tool and adjust aggressiveness, but is by no means certain. I'd like to be able to offer more advice, but I'm more in listening mode at present!

Ian

[The Admiral]

On 06/01/2016 at 22:47, Brent said:

And below, one I've just done from New Year's morning data, just a low res screen grab as I also just have the StarTools demo at present.

It needs at least another couple of hours of data to get the wispy stuff, but it's just starting to show:

 

That's a nice capture Brent. What exposure has that received?

Ian