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Re: Testimonials

Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 10:39 pm
by admin
alacant wrote:No more jumping through hoops. No nonsense, affordable astro software that just works.
I made a blog post with the quote and a bit of publicity:
http://linuxcostablanca.blogspot.com.es ... tools.html
Cheers and clear skies.
Thank you so much! :obscene-drinkingcheers:

Re: Testimonials

Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2018 8:48 pm
by TinySpeck
Hello Ivo,

I'm a brand new astrophotographer. I've been struggling with equipment for a while, but things are finally starting to come together. I had been getting nice results with some preliminary images using StarTools, and now with some decent image data StarTools seemed to be working quite well. I wondered what I might be missing, however, since of course everyone uses PixInsight (PI), so I decided to download their trial and compare. I'm an engineer and quite used to signal processing, so I thought I would appreciate PI's approach.

I spent several hours with PI and was starting to make some progress on my comparison image. It was tough going, despite all the help and tutorials available. Doing barely-acceptable background and color neutralization required me to manually place over 800 sample points on the image, something which StarTools did in Wipe with breathtaking ease. I tried a dozen different approaches in PI, but my unbelievably tedious manual method was the only one which worked even halfway on my rather heavily vignetted image.

PI also creates an alarming volume of intermediate image files. My single image chewed up almost 50 GB (yes, GB) in intermediate disk files.

After giving PI a good run, I looked back at my beautiful results obtained with ease using StarTools and gave it up. I did some more looking for tutorials and found a couple example workflows with StarTools, which have been so successful I was stunned. I'm now creating gorgeous images from even mediocre data with very little effort using StarTools.

What a brilliant program! I didn't realize what a jewel it was until I'd checked out the competition and gotten a little more comfortable with a good StarTools workflow. Now I'm so amazed that I am processing and re-processing my images with ease, just for fun, and can't wait for more new data. I do so hope you can keep maintaining and improving this fabulous program. You've got a lifetime fan here.

Gerrit

Re: Testimonials

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 7:35 am
by admin
TinySpeck wrote:Hello Ivo,

I'm a brand new astrophotographer. I've been struggling with equipment for a while, but things are finally starting to come together. I had been getting nice results with some preliminary images using StarTools, and now with some decent image data StarTools seemed to be working quite well. I wondered what I might be missing, however, since of course everyone uses PixInsight (PI), so I decided to download their trial and compare. I'm an engineer and quite used to signal processing, so I thought I would appreciate PI's approach.

I spent several hours with PI and was starting to make some progress on my comparison image. It was tough going, despite all the help and tutorials available. Doing barely-acceptable background and color neutralization required me to manually place over 800 sample points on the image, something which StarTools did in Wipe with breathtaking ease. I tried a dozen different approaches in PI, but my unbelievably tedious manual method was the only one which worked even halfway on my rather heavily vignetted image.

PI also creates an alarming volume of intermediate image files. My single image chewed up almost 50 GB (yes, GB) in intermediate disk files.

After giving PI a good run, I looked back at my beautiful results obtained with ease using StarTools and gave it up. I did some more looking for tutorials and found a couple example workflows with StarTools, which have been so successful I was stunned. I'm now creating gorgeous images from even mediocre data with very little effort using StarTools.

What a brilliant program! I didn't realize what a jewel it was until I'd checked out the competition and gotten a little more comfortable with a good StarTools workflow. Now I'm so amazed that I am processing and re-processing my images with ease, just for fun, and can't wait for more new data. I do so hope you can keep maintaining and improving this fabulous program. You've got a lifetime fan here.

Gerrit
Thank you so much for your thorough review and testimonial Gerrit!

Thanks to your background in signal processing, you just took a massive a shortcut where others take a long road; starting with ST, then "graduating" to PI (because complex & granular is better, right?) only to eventually return to StarTools after learning more about signal processing and signal preservation.

It's such a common path in fact that I created a PI <> ST "translation table" a good while back for those switching between the two applications, simply to speed up the process; it's best to discover these things for yourself rather than to take someone else's word for it - it's how we learn. As such I definitely encourage people who feel like they're "missing out" to try PI, since it has a 45-day free trial.

If you already bought PI, know that the price is worth it for its stacking capabilities alone. It is probably the best AP processing program of the old filter-upon-filter-upon-filter paradigm; as such it is a great toolbox. Unfortunately its tools don't have a concept of time progression / signal evolution (and hence ignoring a 3rd dimension of signal that can be used by its algorithms to improve results), nor do its tools have any awareness of the commutative properties of the the other tools in the toolbox. At the end of the day, it's just as handicapped as Photoshop in that regard, producing similar results.

It's a hard thing to explain to newbies and intermediates. Fortunately ST's superior results tends to be enough evidence that something else must be going on besides the obvious ease-of-use.

Thank you again & I will add your testimonial to the website!

Re: Testimonials

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 4:47 pm
by TinySpeck
admin wrote:If you already bought PI, know that the price is worth it for its stacking capabilities alone. It is probably the best AP processing program of the old filter-upon-filter-upon-filter paradigm; as such it is a great toolbox. Unfortunately its tools don't have a concept of time progression / signal evolution (and hence ignoring a 3rd dimension of signal that can be used by its algorithms to improve results), nor do its tools have any awareness of the commutative properties of the the other tools in the toolbox. At the end of the day, it's just as handicapped as Photoshop in that regard, producing similar results.
I gave PI enough of a review not to buy it. I completely agree with your positive comments about it though, and indeed the stacking and quality-assessment was really impressive. Deep Sky Stacker has some of that capability though, and I'm working on making the most of that.

Thanks again for such a wonderful program. I bet you've done most of the documentation, too, which is another huge amount of work. You've done the field of AP a great service! If there's anything I can do to pitch in or help, let me know.

Re: Testimonials

Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2018 11:47 am
by niccoc1603
I am new to astro photography and unfortunately I don't have much time to spend on this fantastic hobby.
I almost gave up after starting the "classic" route.

Then i decided to give ST a try, since it was promised to be powerful and simple at the same time. Soon after I discovered it was not just a promise!
The beauty of ST is that after a quick learning curve you will spend your time processing images and getting wonderful results rather than wondering what the hell you have to do next.

Most of all I have to thank Ivo for its fantastic support, I really enjoy exchanging opinion and receiving feedbacks from him!

Re: Testimonials

Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2020 9:27 am
by fmeireso
Hi everyone,

This is real great software.

You have to get it a bit in the fingers and you might need some help at start to learn it, either from the tutorials or Ivo himself which is a execptional advantage or other experienced users.

Runs good , sofar seen no big issues, nor crashes, on Win 10 platform.

Personally i don't like processingt that much because i have to spent whole days after a computer jobwise but i have to say that using Startools somehow inspired me to take a bit more time for it.

Allthough you can go deep with Startools i think for beginners in processing it is more easy start working with it then some other software, like GIMP i use to work with.

Price is really low , for such an application , that imo really works well.

Cheers
Freddy

Re: Testimonials

Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2020 4:58 pm
by firebrand18
"As a relative newcomer to Astrophotography, I struggled with post processing using GIMP and other non-aware astro software; then stumbled upon Star Tools a year ago and haven't looked back. Great for beginners to guide and encourage their efforts and awesome for advanced users with the latest features being rolled out by Ivo and team squeezing the max out of image data.

Support is second to none; highly recommend and endorse!" :thumbsup:

- N. Gialiris, Canada

Re: Testimonials

Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2020 2:09 am
by admin
@fmeireso @firebrand18 thank you both for your kind endorsements! :bow-yellow:
They will be added to the other testimonials in the 1.7-updated content for the 1.7 launch.

Re: Testimonials

Posted: Wed Dec 23, 2020 9:22 pm
by Larry 1969
Hello Ivo and company!
I'm relatively new to image processing and just wanted to say how straight forward and powerful StarTools is.
I was awarded my initial license in a different forum a while back and, with any processing software, there was a learning curve.
But, with some tutorials, I was off and running! Ivo himself would occasionally provide support (which is pretty awesome).
I found all the adjustments in the various modules quite intimidating at first but, now with the latest version and all of the additional presets processing is more user friendly than ever!

I actually received a few APOD awards because of it!

Thanks for all your hard work and a fantastic product that I can't recommend strongly enough!

Larry

Re: Testimonials

Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2020 11:32 pm
by admin
Larry 1969 wrote: Wed Dec 23, 2020 9:22 pm Thanks for all your hard work and a fantastic product that I can't recommend strongly enough!
Many thanks Larry! :D