Processing over-powering stars?

[Martyn87]

Hi all, 

After recently astro-modding my DSLR, I wanted to test it out last night on and spent a couple of hours on the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888). I've been messing about with processing in PixInsight (currently in the trial) and have got the nebula itself with the stars removed to a point I'm happy with, but once I add the stars back in, LOADS of detail is lost. I've tried desaturating the stars, lowering the luminance, but this either doesn't do enough, or causes weird artifacts. Any suggestions on what I could do to improve this? Thanks! 

 

Without Stars:

 

And with:

[Elp]

I think maybe the star layer has too much contrast, the dead giveaway if you have imaged it in RGB is that their colour across the FOV is pretty much near the same close to white, a more saturated starfield with less contrast will show the variation of yellow/orange/red/blue/white stars. White stars can also be the result of clipping of the image data histogram on the RHS. Most people also do a star size reduction (can also be done with curve control which ties to contrast) which helps the nebulosity show through better.

Edited September 13 by Elp

[Budgie1]

If you're using PixInsight and have either Starnet2 or StarXterminator then try stretching the whole image until you get the stars to where you want them.

Then run your star removal process and then stretch just the nebulosity (background) image to where you want that to be.

I've found this method works much better than stretching the whole image and then trying to reduce the stars, and it gives you more control over them as well.

Have a play and see how you get on.

[wimvb]

@Budgie1's workflow is preferred. But if you've already stretched the stars, you can "unstretch" them by applying a histogram stretch with the midpoint slider moved towards the right. Or better yet, a curve stretch with a control point near the middle and pulled down, and saturation boosted. Do this before you put the stars back into the image.