StarTools

It looks better to me , Mike.

To red, well the background seems a liitle reddish , then again maybe too subtle to mention. Great stars, Alnitak is extremely well controlled.

It is a riddle to me that Startools on some occasions does a tremenduous job with less effort for the user. My Alnitak at the time was not a good as yours but still very acceptable.

Hey Freddy thanks,

Well, I'm not sure there was less effort. These NB Accent compositions take some fiddling, at least for me.

I came up with another interim edit, again playing around with a few things based on the other thread...and perhaps becoming too artsy. Oh noes!

I chose some different color/luminance modify options, which can change the blending quite a bit. So I ended up with a better-preserved and lighter Flame, IMO, but I had to reverse a lot of purple stars.

I forgot to use a little gamma adjust in NB Accent, so just did one at the end. Also fed back in a little equalized perceptual grain in denoise to keep the smoothing from being too harsh.

Mostly though I think just doubling up the time permits more choices here, but on this target the Ha can still be overwhelming. I could probably back the gamma off another notch or two here, at least against a dark border. With a bright border it's not as bad.

Finalized my January horsey, still the last astro data I've managed to capture this year.

I'm sure it looks pretty much just like all the others.

But, I appreciated applying 565 and the new OptiDev to it. The stars are so much happier, deringing can just be deringing, and no weird hoops to jump through chasing illusory-yet-oh-so-real donuts.

Another seeming bonus, I didn't need to go masking tiny star rings (against nebulosity) all over the image. Yay! Must be something about the new curve points? There were a handful that still come in during SVD and escape deringing for whatever reason, but not all over the place. So minimal I didn't even bother with repairs.

I did have to go fix some "holes" I was getting in saturated star cores, but that one was around beforehand. I paid attention this time though, and they seem to be generated by Highlight Repair in Color. Will have to try to figure out what's up.


Since I had something to upload, I finally renewed my AB. And my ST while I was at it.

https://astrob.in/zfxghk/0/

Mike in Rancho wrote: ↑Sun Mar 31, 2024 6:56 am And my ST while I was at it.

I just checked my ST licence and it already expired one month ago. But latest beta works without hint and saving is possible as well ... @Ivo - maybe your licence check does not work any more?

Just renewed as well - it's really only a symbolic price!

Dietmar.

decay wrote: ↑Mon Apr 01, 2024 1:35 pm

Mike in Rancho wrote: ↑Sun Mar 31, 2024 6:56 am And my ST while I was at it.

I just checked my ST licence and it already expired one month ago. But latest beta works without hint and saving is possible as well ... @Ivo - maybe your licence check does not work any more?

Just renewed as well - it's really only a symbolic price!

Dietmar.

Yes, contributing to the cause. I might be a heavy user.

I'm not quite sure how things are calculated and checked. IIRC mine said 3-year exp (docs say 2 right?), but it ran out just after the last MR of 1.8, and so 1.8's actual birthdate would be well before that. So I'm not sure I can run a test. Enforcement might not be turned on for a beta, or maybe not at all, or perhaps there's a certain upgrade gap needed. I'm actually not sure how PI's works either, as even full download and installs of major core program upgrades still work -- might only trigger when they go from 1.x to 2.x?