StarTools

Hi IVO,

First let me say that I love StarTools, I have left a thank you note to you in the general discussion section of the forum. What I would love to see in the not too distant future is a version of StarTools that would handle everything from image aquisition to alignment, stacking, combining and then dump the stacked file in for developement. As it stands now unless a person has very deep pockets and pay up for something like Maxim DL, the different stages of obtaining an image require so many pieces of sofware with different capabilities and price tags that make the job very long winded and expensive affair. Last week I attempted my first LRGB image of the M27, the results were lets say nothing to wirte home about. I however, spent a long time aligning and registering the files in photoshop and then saving them one by one by deleting the layers before combining in StarTools, very long winded and tiring procedure to say the least. The alternative was to buy a license for RegiStar for $150.00 to automate the procedure, something that I am not prepared to do at the moment. I also have various sets of data captured with different cameras and scopes and at differnt scales that could be combined given a piece of software that is capable of handling different scales, orientations and sizes, I know that I am asking for lot but let us know what you think.

Many Thanks and Regards,

A.G

A.G,

Many thanks for the ringing endorsement - it's comments like these that keep me going!

I would absolutely love to apply the StarTools philosophy to all software-based aspects of AP. The trouble is that StarTools is pretty much a one man band right now, making a loss (e.g. I don't cover development costs). I work on it part-time as income and time permits. In all honesty, I don't know how long I will be able to keep this up in the long term, but I'm a bit idealistic like that...

When I embarked on StarTools, there was much to innovate and improve on in the domain of post-processing for AP (and 3 years later, not much has changed when it comes to the 'competition' to be honest), whereas pre-processing and acquisition was reasonably well catered for. Indeed, those solutions cost money, but, even though I'm crazy enough to work for peanuts and honor, I understand that other developers do require a more realistic price (and thus income) to keep them going.

The most important thing I wanted to achieve through StarTools was lowering the bar to entry. A free application like DSS, combined with StarTools makes for a very low-cost beginners software suite, extended by PhD and low-cost acquisition tools like APT or BackyardEOS. I think StarTools achieved that goal of lowering the bar to entry, evidenced by the many ST users that indeed start out with just a generic DSLR and a healthy dose of enthusiasm. I love seeing that!

At the same time, it also fills me with great joy and pride when these users go on to produce some mind-blowing images with StarTools as they advance in the hobby. Unfortunatley, yes, they will have probably had to invest in gear and software along the way, but StarTools will have (hopefully) played a role in cutting short the journey to producing such fantastic images, hopefully instilling confidence in these user's abilities of achieving their goals from the outset.

Until there is nothing more to improve in StarTools' post processing capabilities, who know, stacking a pre-processing could be next. You're definitely not the first to suggest this!

The image aligning procedure you bring up though is definitely something that has been a prime candidate for implementation in StarTools for a while. I'd really like to implement this at some stage, however the next 1.4 iteration will be more about architectural updates and optimisations rather than new features. I might be able to fit it in somewhere though...

Good afternoon Ivo,

Many thanks for taking the time to reply to my long winded request list.
I am very happy with starTools as it stands now and will be more than happy to purchase a new license for an upgraded package if and when it becomes available, the evidence so far suggests that it will be worth it.

Regards,

A.G