StarTools

I'm guessing that star spikes can be added using synth. Could anybody give me a step by step, (button by button), procedure how to do this. I get as far as the calculating point spread function, it then says star mask too dense, so I follow the instructions auto, stars & do but I have no idea what to do next?
Hope someone can help. I only want them on a couple of the brightest stars.
Kind regards,
Phil

Hi Phil,

Please make sure only stars are selected, e.g. if the 'Auto' feature selected noise grain or anything that isn't a star, deselect them. You can also deselect fine noise grain by clicking 'Shrink' and then 'Grow' in the mask editor. It sounds like StarTools is warning you that too much is selected that isn't part of a star's core.

Once you have a star mask that accurately captures the location of stars, you should be good to go.

Synth requires all point lights be selected in your image (e.g. not just 'some' stars) to accurately model physically correct light diffraction. If you just select a few of the brightest stars, it will start looking 'fake'; in any sort of optical train, every point light, no matter how small will spread its light across the whole of the image.

Once Synth has rendered the light, be sure to tone it down; less is more.

Hope this helps.