StarTools

Hi Ivo,

Many of use are using StarNet to remove stars form images and also to create pixel accurate masks. Is it possible to somehow link to this simple software (eg you place the Starnet folder in say the startools folder and it looks for the starnet folder and executes the program then loads image?). While its easy to run it on images it would be nice if say in the layer module you could "send" an image to Starnet and it returns the starless image. It would just save time having to import and export files and then get back to layer module to use them, plus maybe its a great extra "mask" tool as it allows selecting stars perfectly with almost no trial and error.

No Problems if its all too difficult but I notice PixINsight seemed to create a module for linking to it and I believe it has no lic issues etc.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/6517 ... -software/

GitHub link: https://github.com/nekitmm/starnet

Hi,

I gave this some thought.

It is technically entirely possible; a fairly mature interface actually already exists for automating StarTools (as used by STReplay). It does, however, not support image import and export currently (mostly because of Tracking which doesn't deal with "images", but rather a 3D representation of the image evolution over time).

I'm not a huge fan of StarNet++, as getting it up and running is difficult (if at all possible on a particular OS), while it only works on stretched images. More importantly, I am yet to see a convincing use case for it... What exactly do you use the star masks for?

It may be worthwhile improving the star mask generation routine... (it got some ideas for 1.7 )

Hi Ivo,

Yes it can be a little obscure. I use it for:
1. detailed star masks, better than I can achieve in ST currently
2. remove stars from my RGB image so I can fully control nebular colour without any impact to star colour (eg in narrowband), then add stars back.
3. remove narrowband stars from RGB so I can add RGB stars back into the image using a RGB stars layer, starless RGB layer then LUM layer.
4. To create funky starless image (artistic).

The use of the heal module and layers or even compose could achieve 2,3 and 4.
1, I learn new tricks all the time with the mask tool

Not nearly as elegantly...heal will fail on huge starfields or look a complete mess. Yes composing can be done in layers but you need this starless image in any case.

I'm only suggesting this because I'm using Starnet and many others I know. It really is much easier and more reliable than any other method used and produces star masks that are essentially perfect just via a difference map.

happy-kat wrote:The use of the heal module and layers or even compose could achieve 2,3 and 4.
1, I learn new tricks all the time with the mask tool