Auto star shrink

[arrowspace90]

If I try to use the auto shrink for stars in this RGB image, will the mask protect the background elements of the galaxy, or will the stars in M33
be shrunk as well?
Obviously I don't wish the latter, so would I need to manually pick stars to shrink to be safe? The large yellow ones are the main culprits when seen at a higher resolution and there aren't all that many of them.

[happy-kat]

You create the mask you want on the stars you want, you have the control

[arrowspace90]

right. I don't know how to do that.

[arrowspace90]

In the example below, I just want to shrink some of the bright, bloated stars.
But when I try the auto method, the galaxies in the group are green along with the stars.
I have tried several times with a lasso mask to circle the problem stars, or to circle the galaxies. But I can't figure out
how to tell Star Tools to shrink ONLY the stars and leave out the little galaxies.
Can someone tell me simply what the steps are?
Yes, I stipulate I am dumb to not know how to do this.

[arrowspace90]

So here, I have got masks over mostly just the stars I want to shrink with the little galaxies excluded. Looks like it would work but...

what do I do now? If I press the obvious "shrink" tab, the green masks shrink, not the stars. So this is where I am stuck. I could do this backwards, and
just mask the galaxies, perhaps that's more correct. But then, same thing, how do you execute the shrink to actually happen?

[almcl]

Don't use the 'Shrink' button within the mask module - that's for changing the size of the mask.

To change the size of the stars, having created your mask, 'Keep' it and then, when back on the main page, select the Shrink button there:

shrink.jpg (24.33 KiB) Viewed 4383 times

Here's what I got when operating on your image above, not perfect by any means, but have a play with the iterations and other parameters in the Shrink module:

Untitled-1.jpg (57.27 KiB) Viewed 4382 times

[arrowspace90]

Thanks.
Of course I was using the "Shrink" tab. I didn't try iterations, so I will do that. What you did is an improvement. I read that SCTs and RASAs like mine are prone to bloated stars and halos.