StarTools

Hi Ivo,
quick question: what would be the suggested position for Shrink?
Upon introduction of the module, you suggested usage after Decon but the button position (1.7.426) suggests to use Shrink as last stop before Denoise. However I found it was producing dark ring artifacts around stars at this position (potentially due to Life/Isolate) running beforehand. I redid the same workflow with Shrink inserted after Decon and Isolate after Color and found the results much more pleasing.
If I am not mistaken here, the flow would then end up with: ... - Decon - (Shrink) - Color - Life - (Filter) - Entropy - Denoise - ...

regards,
jochen

The mask you used on Shrink may not have been sized quite right if you were getting ringing, if I am not happy with the results I either try shrink or grow on the mask.

I tried tweaking the mask....
Also i used various settings, e.g. less iterations
anyway the results were much different when Shrink ran after Decon and Shrink produced a great result out of the box in that position.
Hence the question.

Really, the suggested workflow is really just that - a suggestion

If any sort of ringing is present in your image (for example introduced by incorrect or too aggressive settings in Decon), then Shrink may indeed exacerbate this. For this purpose there is a de-ringing parameter to somewhat counter this behaviour.

The Life module definitely makes ringing less obvious. So if Shrink then uses as that as an input, it may indeed yield much more pleasing results in that case.

In short, it indeed all does depend a on your image and tastes!