AstroFlat Pro or GradientXterminator for background

[Galaxyfaraway]

Has anyone compared the two? I am not sure which works better but Astroflat Pro looks pretty good/useable.

https://www.prodigitalsoftware.com/AstroFlatPro1Help.html

http://www.rc-astro.com/resources/GradientXTerminator/purchase.php

Also anyone uses Astronomy Tools Action Set on the lates version of PS by chance? (version 20, mac). Website says it works with all modern versions of PS but I don't know whether the website might be out of date? https://www.prodigitalsoftware.com/AstronomyToolsActions.html

Want to make sure to get the right thing. Thanks.

[PeterCPC]

May be me but I could never get GE to work well. AFP works every time.

Peter

[Galaxyfaraway]

2 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

May be me but I could never get GE to work well. AFP works every time.

Peter

Thanks, yes the feeling I got from watching a couple of examples is that AFP looks a bit more powerful/reliable somehow.

[happy-kat]

Whilst gradient exterminator is good for pretty much the same price you could get StarTools, and that has an excellent wipe function.

[emyliano2000]

I have both of them and each one workd good in their own way.  I found that GradX is darkening the sky around the bright objects in the photo if applied more aggressively, creating like a dark circle around them and AstroFlat Pro is eating your data if you have heavy gradients and use the the DarkNoise Reduction too much to get rid of them.

Emil

[ollypenrice]

2 hours ago, emyliano2000 said:

I have both of them and each one workd good in their own way.  I found that GradX is darkening the sky around the bright objects in the photo if applied more aggressively, creating like a dark circle around them and AstroFlat Pro is eating your data if you have heavy gradients and use the the DarkNoise Reduction too much to get rid of them.

Emil

This sounds like Pixinsight's Automatic Background Extraction or what happens when you place background markers too close to the galaxy in Dynamic Background Extraction. However you do it, it is vital to keep the background sky markers well away from any nebulosity signal, however faint. GradX does give you the opportunity to correct only genuine background sky but you need to give this a bit of study on the net.

Olly