StarTools

Sorry folks. This is puzzling me. Still.

observing: A few distant street lights but nothing like a city.

method: crop - autodev - wipe - dev 85%

Is it possible to wipe the red and keep the nebula? I can do it by filtering the red but even with a mask, it's obvious I've masked it and the nebula stays red. Include the nebula and it gets pitted. I also tried life but again removes most of the delicate nebula.

fits: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_uUt0 ... sp=sharing

Could you try bumping up the Dark Anomaly filter?
It appears to me your data is quite noisy, and so small single pixel dark anomalies could cause trouble.

Hi Ivo
Yeah thanks. That seems to help. I tried 5 pixels and it made the background darker. I'm now triyng 20. Been going an hour already though and still not at 50%. Is this where an extra core or 8 would come in handy?

Times when you wish your pc had an i7 processor ssd drive and 16gb ram,not sure why your stars look bloated though must be something causing it.

LOL. Yeah. The affordability of my laptop is comprable with that of my astro hardware. Cheepo laptop to match the cheepo glass, the latter almost certainly a big player in the fat star contest:(

OK. On 20 it never finished so here it is on 12. An improvement, but needed life > less and more to get rid of what was left. Lost detail with the latter. Tradeoff between noise and dark background?. So, getting there.
Thanks for your time everyone. Hey, at least with Ivo's software you get something. With gimp stretching and masking I'd get nowhere near this so a big thanks for deving this sw.