Trouble using DSS (advtanges compared to stacking in PS?)

[Sedna]

Before I start with my issue, I want to state up front that I'm a casual imager. I'm not trying to take the best pictures because I know I never will. I just want nice pictures that I'm reasonably happy with and don't take me all week to process (because I don't have that much time). So, I typically don't shoot dark frames or flat frames yet. Maybe I'll bother with that when I'm better at the basics.

Ok, so, my issue. I have a Wine port of Deepskystacker (DSS) for Mac OSX Version 4.1.1 (downloaded here). I tried stacking several relatively short (all < 30 sec) exposures of the Milky Way in the direction of Cygnus. On my first attempt at stacking, the output .tif is totally dark until I make adjustments in Adobe lightroom. I think it looked this way because I used only one dark frame (yes, I realize that's not how you're supposed to do it, but I only had one and what the hell, why not experiment). I then cranked up the exposure and played with some other settings in Adobe Lightroom and got the first attached image. The Milky Way is super detailed, but there's so much grainy noise!

Next, I just stacked the light frames (using the default parameters, average stacking, etc.) Well, having no dark frames, I got a bunch of hot pixels but a more normal looking picture (second image attached). Unlike the first DSS image, I could see stars now even before cranking up the exposure. But, I decided to discard this one because of the hot pixels.

My last attached picture is the image as it appears after stacking the frames in Adobe Photoshop. Okay, this is definitely the most "normal" photo out of all of them. I see lots of stars, some dust lanes, even a hint of the North American Nebula. But no matter what I do, I cannot recover the level of Milky Way detail I had in the first DSS stacked image!

Ok, now my questions:

1) What is the advantage of DSS over Photoshop (other than the fact that DSS is freeware)? What can DSS do that Photoshop can't?

2) Should "causal imagers" like myself even bother with DSS? How steep in the learning curve?

3) Is there any point in using DSS without dark frames?

4) How can I get a good stacked image with the level of Milky Way detail I have in my first attached image, but without the grainy noise?

Thanks everyone!

[toxic]

ok to stack in photshop would take forever - dss is easy - but try 1 thing in dss when aligning colour or applying any stretching to you image try applying the settings instead of embedding them before saving .

http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/userguide.htm

hope this helps.