When to remove stars?

[rubecula]

After several goes at trying to process a HOO image I'm wondering if removing the stars will work better.  So far I have managed to get reasonable colours out of the nebula and surrounding hydrogen clouds but the stars end up a mess with large halos.  This using PS.  Not sure I want to spend money on PI.

I've been starting the process on Ha and OIII subs stacked and gradients removed in APP.  I've then done some gently stretching and level adjustments such that the stars and nebula are visible. My next stage would be to drop the stacked and stretched images into the R, G and B channels of a new document.

Would it be better to remove the stars in the separate Ha and OIII stacks first or when they are combined in the new document?  My plan would be to use Colour Range to select and remove the stars, before continuing with further stretching.

Thanks

[Seelive]

I've used the free Starnet software (https://sourceforge.net/projects/starnet/files/) to remove stars from images quite successfully on several occasions to allow separate processing of the nebula and the stars before recombining them. Their is a PI module version but more relevant to you is the standalone version (which is what I use).  The images do need to have some stretching applied for it to be successful.

[rubecula]

Thanks, I've tried Starnet and it didn't do a very good job. so I'm going combine the Ha and OIII stacks and use the method shown on AstroBackyard.

[newbie alert]

Lots of ways to remove stars in PS.. 

https://youtu.be/-NajE2n0_6I

[newbie alert]

https://youtu.be/EQlGsM-S8vM

Edited July 15, 2020 by newbie alert
Wrong link