Star Tools Has Hit!!! ?

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Hi,

A whole collection of my old and new images, which had been ruined by using GIMP. I've been processing for several hours all week, and these are the results. I'm blown away by how powerful this program is: I would recommend it to absolutely everyone!  

All images were taken with a 1000d on 130P-DS. All are guided except M101, which is very old data, so apologies for the coma and trailing. There was an M51 image, but it was more of a test session, with a full moon blazing down, and there were some pretty massive collimation and gradient issues. (Now resolved, I hope! )

M3--Globular Cluster. Taken last Monday.

M31-Andromeda Galaxy. My 1st ever autoguided image from about September last year. Nasty gradient meant I never processed it. Until Star Tools, that is!

M42--Orion Nebula. Taken last November, before my camera was modded.

M45--The Pleiades. From last winter. 

M81 & 82--Bode's and Cigar Galaxies. My last image before modding, so not much Cigar Ha.

M101--Pinwheel Galaxy. Very old data from before autoguiding and modding.

Rosette Nebula. Before modding. This required my longest ever sub length, over 5 mins, to pick up the nebula heart.

 

This one is sort of out of place, as I never processed it with StarTools, but here it is:

NGC who knows what--Flame and Horsehead Nebulae. A test image after modding which turned out better than expected. Sub lengths were quite short, so not an enormous amount of nebula.

 

Now to wait for the Eagle, Lagoon, Trifid, and a load of other nebs in the south!

John

[almcl]

Glad it worked out OK, John.

Looks like you'll be giving the rest of us some tips soon ?

[JohnSadlerAstro]

14 minutes ago, almcl said:

Looks like you'll be giving the rest of us some tips soon ?

I doubt it lol  

[Mr niall]

These are all brilliant! How idiot proof would you say star tools is? I’m pretty much constantly overwhelmed by photoshop! If anything ever works it’s  more luck than judgement!

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Hi,

It's very, very easy and simple to use, once you've learnt the basic workings of the tools. I was able to get decent results within a day of getting it. There is a quite useful tutorial on the official YT channel, as well, which explains a basic work sequence.

Its mostly based on sliders, and although it seems rather over-simple, it does a far better job.

This is a typical kind of workflow:

John

[ecuador]

I gave a StarTools demonstration at my local astronomy club last year, as I think it is by far the best option for many users - especially beginners or people on a budget. In 15 minutes with StarTools I get what would take me at least an hour in the best case or several hours in the worst with other software. And it is very inexpensive (as well as with a no time-limited demo).

There is one caveat, it is completely different than any other software, so the first couple of times you use it it will seem bonkers (especially the first autodev result), even though in reality it is much simpler than other programs - just unusual. That's why I did the live demonstration to get people going. I was supposed to record it and put it up, but of course technology failed me and I made a blog post with step-by-step instructions of a DSLR image processing workflow instead, which has proven quite useful to beginners.

[bottletopburly]

10 minutes ago, JohnSadlerAstro said:

Hi,

It's very, very easy and simple to use, once you've learnt the basic workings of the tools. I was able to get decent results within a day of getting it. There is a quite useful tutorial on the official YT channel, as well, which explains a basic work sequence.

Its mostly based on sliders, and although it seems rather over-simple, it does a far better job.

This is a typical kind of workflow:

John

I love startools John  I’m a believer some peeps don’t get it but it simplifies processing , I didn’t get on with PS  so much faffing about  for me don’t be fooled  by it , it is extremely powerful,   great images ,by the way take a look at Ecuador’s tutorial   http://astro.ecuadors.net/processing-a-noisy-dslr-image-stack-with-startools/ probably the best tutorial I have seen on startools , startools forum has good info and Ivo Jager is extremely helpful , and cost wise it’s not going to break the bank . 

[bottletopburly]

26 minutes ago, Mr niall said:

These are all brilliant! How idiot proof would you say star tools is? I’m pretty much constantly overwhelmed by photoshop! If anything ever works it’s  more luck than judgement!

Give it a try startools is free to try for as long as you want , you just can’t save final image until you pay for the licence , though you can screen shot , 

[Bubbles82]

Like the look of this software very much,even when I tried to process the data I have captured over only a few sessions I’ve been totally unable to get anything like a  recognisable coloured image. After watching a few videos on this software just now it seems very suited to getting you an image quickly as well as offering further more in depth processing.I would say that anyone who is new to processing like myself would be me much more inclined to see processing as fun if right from the go you have an image that’s even close to looking like the object you we’re imaging.?

[JohnSadlerAstro]

A feature I especially like is the "Shroud" option in "Life". It creates slight glow around stars, and when used sparingly it gives a better sense of depth as well as going a long way to smooth out the background noise.

[bottletopburly]

34 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

 

 

53 minutes ago, JohnSadlerAstro said:

 

John

In the startools folder there is a txt file John it  has your workflow saved after every session so you can look at it .?

[tomato]

It’s pretty idiot proof, I use it a lot ?

I really like how you can keep it simple if you wish, or dive deeper by altering the myriad of user adjustable settings in each of the Processor elements.

It is only my opinion, but I think first class data doesn’t need a whole lot of processing to get a reasonable result, but here in the UK with mediocre skies and personally struggling to get decent total integration times, a package like StarTools with it’s many ‘fix it’ tools, is the difference between an image seeing the light of day, or never getting past the calibration and stacking stage.

[happy-kat]

I too am a very happy user, though I will say skipping flats is not really an option. Flats make a noticeable difference to quality of background and the StarTools results and I also always use dark flats as well. Do try the latest beta version I've not had any problems. Guy has done some excellent fact posts on each module on the StarTools forum. Whilst it will run on 32 bit XP it crashes fairly often unless binned heavily but not have any issues on W10 64 bit on a 6+ year old PC.

[MarsG76]

Star Tools looks like it's performing nicely for you... 

[MarsG76]

Oh and great images....