The Shrink module offers comprehensive stellar profile modification by shrinking, tightening and re-colouring stars.
A good star mask is essential for good results. Even though the Shrink module is much more gentle on structural detail, ideally, only stars are treated and not any structural detail.
The 'AutoMask' button launches a popup with access to two quick ways of creating a star mask. This same popup is shown upon first launch of the module. The generated masks tend to catch all major stars with very few false positives. If you also wish to include fainter, small stars in the mask, then more sophisticated techniques are recommended to avoid including other detail.
Finally, if your object is mostly obscured by a busy star field, for example in a widefied, then also consider using the Super Structure module to enhance the super structures in your image and push back the busy star field. Combining both the Shrink module's output and the Super Structure module's output can greatly transform a busy looking image in positive ways.
Two 'Mode' settings are available;
The Shrink module uses an iterative process; the strength of the Tighten or Dim effect is controlled by the number of 'Iterations', as well as the 'Regularization' parameter that dampens the effect. The stringing and pitting artefacts commonly produced by less sophisticated techniques, is thereby avoided.
The 'Color Taming' parameter forces stars to progressively adopt the colouring of their surroundings, like "chameleons".
The 'Halo Extend' parameter effectively grows the given mask temporarily, thereby including more of each star's surroundings.
If the image has been deconvolved or sharpened and the stars may be subject to subtle ringing artefacts, then the 'De-ringing' parameter will take this into account when shrinking the stellar profiles, as to not exacerbate the ringing.
The 'Un-glow' feature attempts to reduce the halos around bright, over-exposing stars. 'Un-glow Strength' throttles the strength of the effect. The 'Un-glow Kernel' specifies the width of the halos.
A good star mask is essential for good results. Though the Shrink module is much more gentle on structural detail than the basic unsophisticated morphological transformations (such as minimum filters) found in other software, ideally, only stars are treated and not any nebulosity, gaseous filaments or other structural detail.
The 'AutoMask' button launches a pop-up with access to two quick ways of creating a star mask. This same popup is shown upon first launch of the module. The generated masks tend to catch all major stars with very few false positives. If you also wish to include fainter, small stars in the mask, then more sophisticated techniques are recommended to avoid including other detail.
Besides touching up the mask by hand, it is also possible to combine the results of an aggressive auto-generated star mask (catching all faint stars), with a less aggressive auto-generated star mask (catching fewer faint stars, but also leaving structural detail alone);
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All that said, if you're a fan of the traditional 'handicapped' way of colour processing in other software, then StarTools can emulate this type of processing as well.
However the Synth module can physically model and emulate most real optical systems and configurations to obtain a desired result.
The magnitude of the noise grain is subsequently recovered, modeled and shaped for use as quantization error diffusion in the final denoised image.
The HDR (High Dynamic Range) module optimises local dynamic range, recovering small to medium detail from your image.
You can convert everything you see to a format you find convenient. Give it a try!