Star reducer tool in Astro Pixel Processor

The latest release of Astro Pixel Processor (APP), V1.083 beta 2, features a star reducer tool that helps to quickly reduce or remove bright stars in astro-images, to better bring out nebulas or faint details in general. 

This new star reducer tool in APP can be an alternative for other star removal tools (e.g. Starnet++) or actions to reduce the star size in e.g. Photoshop, Affinity... 

Used this new feature – for the first time - on a Pro Dataset of the Blue Horsehead Nebula in the Scorpius constellation (IC 4592). Images captured with CHI-5; dataset curated by Ian Howarth.

The attached pictures show some screenshots of this star reducer tool menu in APP, with the original (previously stacked and integrated) image of IC 4592, after removing all stars and after reducing the star size. 

First impression: both star removal as star reducing actions seem to work well, with limited artefacts in the processed images. 

The star removal action seems to leave a subtle trail of the stars, but that doesn’t really bother. 

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I like the star reducing action in particular, as you can both control the final star size and/or intensity (and the area to be corrected around the original stars). This action gives a more “natural look” to the final image. 

I post-processed this image, with reduced size and intensity of the stars, in Photoshop as an example.

Does anyone else already have experience with this new star reducer tool in APP?

This blog post was originally published in our Telescope Live Community.

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