StarTools

Hi, new to this astrophotography hobby and just bought StarTools to do some post-processing of M33.
I've seen some tutorials on standard workflows but I'm having some problems especially at autodev and wiping.
So autodev gives me this huge overexposed green glow over the centre the image, which wiping doesn't remove completely unless I push the gradient aggressiveness to 100%, but then it me with some red mottled patchy background (pic attached) instead of a clean black space in the tutorials I've seen.

I've also attached a link to my attempt at processing this image below. I do also see a hint of the running man nebula but unable to bring it out.

Image is untracked from Bortle 8-9 zone, stacked in DSS: about 390 lights, 100 darks and 85 bias.

Would greatly appreciate some help or advice.
Thanks guys!

FTS file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3i2f1oakor1b2mw/3-1.FTS?dl=0
Processed: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qkp8uvi8y7ojqr7/3-1.png?dl=0

The big green glow is, in part, due to not using flats. If you are able to take these, they will help enormously, probably more than darks.

The odd edge and corner glows may be down to stacking artefacts. I cropped your stacked image quite hard and then ran it through a very quick process and got this:
so you definitely have some worthwhile data there.

Hi and welcome to the forums!
@almcl has already given you great advice;
The circular green "glow" is not glow but is caused by uneven lighting (aka "vignetting"). You need to take flats and to compensate for the uneven lighting. Not only will that take care of uneven lighting, it will also take care of dust on your sensor (some small dust specks can be seen). Flats are really not optional.

Using the Vignetting preset in the Wipe module will work well if the vignetting is mostly centred and gradually falls off (crop the iamge first).
In this dataset, however, I can see some rather clear signs of "banding" (rather abrupt changes from one brightness level to another with no pixels in the image using the brightness levels in between). These abrupt changes make processing harder for most algorithms (as abrupt changes normally correlate with detail that needs preserving).Some things that may help;

• Can you tell us what stacking method you used? If you have 390 lights, you can use more sophisticated stacking algorithms (e.g. kappa-sigma). Banding may happen if you are using median stacking and/or if the signal in your RAW frames sits in just a few brightness levels with the rest allocated to gradients and light pollution.
• A good rule of thumb when shooting, is to make sure the background sky brightness level (usually the peak in your histogram) sits around 1/3rd from the left. This leaves 2/3rds of your sensor's dynamic range to encode "interesting detail".
• Shoot at an ISO that is native to your sensor. (see if you can find your camera here)

I managed this, processing your dataset; You captured the flame nebula (and very, very, very faint horsehead) in the bottom left as well.
I can post the processing log if you wish, but it mostly deals with working around the defects in your data, so I don't think it will be very re-usable.

Clear skies!

Thanks for the advice @almcl and Ivo!
I didn't know flat frame were that important.

I followed the stacking settings from this guide: https://astro.ecuadors.net/processing-a ... startools/
Stacking method - kappa-sigma for light frame, median kappa-sigma for the others
So my camera is a Sony a6000 with a 18-135mm lens zoomed to the maximum. According to the graph, optimal ISO is 400 instead of the 12800 I used. Would that mean that at ISO400 I will need more light frames?

Added flat frames and restacked: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9bir8jvveu6qt9q/3-3.FTS?dl=0
Managed to get this: Couldn't see the horsehead nebula but quite happy with this outcome.

I downloaded the latest stack, I am not sure the flats actually helped as it looked quite strange in Wipe.
You can pick out the horse head and running man.
I drive my ISO selection based on the exposure length and ensuring the light histogram is fully clear of the left edge when I take the first sample image of the session.
Flat darks are very easy to take and combined with flats really help with background noise.
I like to use the new DSS beta and in settings turn off white balance, then in the latest beta startools use the new linear option, though Ivo you might like to know that the Sony A6000 is not a listed camera, maybe this Sony doesn't use a bayer matrix?

I would like to see the processing log please Ivo.