Hi Che,
Thanks for the kind words and buttering up. I'm known to respond well to that sort of thing...
You got some nice data there.
Here's what I did. Please note that I used a development version of ST for this, but most things should be replicable with the 1.3.5 beta.
As always, I use AutoDev to see what we got.
I can see a yellow bias (probably light pollution), and some tiny stacking artifacts.
The data appears to be oversampled at native resolution (e.g. 1 unit of real detail is 'smeared out' over multiple pixels), so really it's probably a good idea to Bin the data a little. I didn't do that in this case, just to see if we could use deconvolution to bring back the detail to 1 unit-to-1 pixel (which turned out to be wishful thinking, but you gotta try these things...
).
I also cropped out the stacking artifacts before doing further processing.
I applied Wipe with default values. The data is very good in the sense that it is evenly lit, with no dark anomalies (ex. dust bunnies or dead pixels). You did a great job with your calibration!
Wipe loves this sort of data.
For my final global stretch, I launch the AutoDev module again and (obviously) choose to redo my stretch. Due to the presence of quite a bit of noise in the lower scales, is set Ignore fine detail to < 3.0 pixels. This ensures that AutoDev won't optimize the histogram transformation for bringing out that fine noise, allocating dynamic range to 'interesting' larger detail instead.
I attempted some deconvolution. The oversampling required that I intervened a little in the mask creation. I used the decon preset in the 'Auto' feature of the mask editor, clicked grow about 8 times until the stars and halos were well covered, and then inverted the mask (decon requires 'gaps' where big fat white stars are).
I chose a radius of 1.9 pixels. A slight amount of detail was recovered and some stars appear a bit tighter. With slightly binned data you may have better luck though.
With the same mask still active, I used the Sharp module. Use it to taste oviously, but this is what I used;
Parameter [Scale 1] set to [8 %] to avoid exacerbating the finest noise.
Parameter [Scale 2] set to [50 %] also to avoid exacerbating fine noise.
Parameter [Scale 3] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Scale 4] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Scale 5] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Amount] set to [230 %]
Parameter [Small Detail Bias] set to [97 %] to give priority to small detail if two scales happen to be 'fighting' to enhance the same pixel.
As one of the last steps (recommened), I used the Color module (not that the settings below may not look correct in the current 1.3.5 beta - I'm still doing a lot of development on the Color module currently). Here too, the adage is 'season to taste', but I used the following settings;
Parameter [Cap Green] set to [To Yellow] to remove any spurious green pixels.
Parameter [Dark Saturation] set to [3.90]
Parameter [Bright Saturation] set to [Full]
Parameter [Saturation Amount] set to [100 %]
Parameter [Blue Bias Reduce] set to [1.00]
Parameter [Green Bias Reduce] set to [1.52]
Parameter [Red Bias Reduce] set to [2.09]
Before switching off Tracking and to push back the noise in the background, I ran the Life module with its Isolate preset at 75% strength.
Finally I applied noise reduction (switching Tracking off) with the following parameters;
Parameter [Color Detail Loss] set to [12 %]
Parameter [Brightness Detail Loss] set to [15 %]
Parameter [Redistribution Kernel] set to [6.1 pixels]
Parameter [Read Noise Compensation] set to [0.20]
This is what I ended up with;
-
- dssfitsPacMan_ST135.jpg (797.44 KiB) Viewed 8962 times
I should've probably binned the data and the stars could stand some rounding, but all-in-all it's a rather nice Pac Man!
For the bloated stars, did the Magic module's 'Shrink' or 'Tighten' algorithms help at all?
Hope this worflow helps!
. Now that I've buttered you up 
..............I've been able to get to a point with the software that I am able to get better results than I was getting with "other"programs and in less time. With that said, I still feel that I don't really have as good a grasp on its use as I should. Here is a link to my latest effort http://astrob.in/56158/ NGC 281(the Pac Man nebula) totally* processed in StarTools(after stacking in DeepSkyStacker), 50 subs of 10 min each with no background calibration. I like my result but would really appreciate having an expert in the software (you of course) process the image to see what you come up with. I cant help but think that as I fumble around, I may not be getting all I can from my data. Here is the unaltered stacked data https://www.dropbox.com/s/cup9nxi2t2cj6 ... PacMan.FTS When you get the time and if you are so inclined, could you take a stab at it and post your results and the process you used. Feel free to use/share my data anyway you would like. * Let me fess up and say that that image wasn't totaly done in StarTools. As a last step I opened it in PS and dodged a few of the bright bloated stars as I couldn't seem to fix them to my satisfaction in ST. thanks in advance for any help