Stratton, how to?

[DaveS]

OK, I've purchased a copy of Stratton to be able to process stars and nebulae separately, but my first forays have been frustrating. Nebulae have big pale areas where stars were, while trying it on galaxies leaves those pale circles, while taking out some galactic cores.

No my assumption is that I'm doing something wrong, either in preparing the image for star removal, or in setting up Stratton, but there is no help file or guide, nor can I find any sensible slider for star adjustment. Unless I'm overlooking it.

I think there are people here who use Stratton, presumably successfully, so how do they get it to work? Or is there an online resource that might help?

TIA,

Dave.

[steppenwolf]

I have found Straton to give very variable effects although when it works well, it works very well! Inow prefer to use PixInsight and the Starnet++ process as it is much more predicatble. However, if you don't use PixInsight, Starnet++ has a stand-alone version so it might be worth having a look at this free software.

 

[DaveS]

Many thanks for the link Steve.

I knew about Starnet++ from posts in the DSO Imaging section but thought it was a PI only plug-in. I do have a trial of PI running but since the latest version of AstroArt came out I'm wondering if I really *need* it.

Will investigate further.

[DaveS]

Well I downloaded the software, but now I have no idea how to use it. At least it was free. I tried copying the files into the AstroArt folder in program files, hoping it would find it as a plug-in, but no luck.

[tooth_dr]

25 minutes ago, DaveS said:

Well I downloaded the software, but now I have no idea how to use it. At least it was free. I tried copying the files into the AstroArt folder in program files, hoping it would find it as a plug-in, but no luck.

I’m the same Dave. No idea how to use it. I bought Straton for that reason but would like to get Starnett working. 

Edited November 10, 2019 by tooth_dr

[DaveS]

This is what I get with Stratton using the default settings

I'm not fussed about the borders as I would crop them off anyway, it's the big pale circles where stars used to be.

[carastro]

I have a licence for it, but I didn't bother to install it on my new PC as I never seem to get good results with star removal it seems to mess up the nebula and as you say you get star halo remnants.  I think you are supposed to clone those out with the healing tool.

I also have Annie's actions star removal and have the same result with that.  Hence I never seem to be able to remove stars and then put them back again like some people do.

Going on memory, it will only do mono images and I think you load in the image you want to de-star, left hand "button" (?file).   Without seeing the screen in front of me, I can only recall hitting a button to the right hand end of the tools. I think it was tools/remove stars from this image. 

Annie's actions is a one click action. 

Carole 

Edited November 10, 2019 by carastro

[DaveS]

I wish Stratton would come with something resembling documentation, other software does at least have a help file of some kind. With this I'm just flailing around. Since there's no Healing Tool in Stratton i'll have to pull the TIFFs into GIMP to deal with the halos, as I don't have PS.