Photoshop star removal plugin

[Dmack1]

Russel Croman (GradientXterminator) has just released a new photoshop plug in to remove stars - StarXterminator

 

StarXTerminator (rc-astro.com)

 

On a very quick runthrough I am highly impressed.

 

i took the same image

 

removed stars in Pixinsight with Starnet++ to get this - some quite bad artefacts

 

 

Took the same tiff image into photoshop used Star exterminator to get this much improved version

 

 

One of my problems with Starnet++ has always been the matrix artefact where bright stars were removed, like this

 

 

with starXterminator that is just not an issue (the sales pitch does reference this specific issue)

 

I have a lot more trialling to do with it but it sure looks promising.

 

See what you think.

 

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by Dmack1

[AstronomyUkraine]

10 minutes ago, Dmack1 said:

Russel Croman (GradientXterminator) has just released a new photoshop plug in to remove stars - StarXterminator

 

StarXTerminator (rc-astro.com)

 

On a very quick runthrough I am highly impressed.

 

i took the same image

 

removed stars in Pixinsight with Starnet++ to get this - some quite bad artefacts

 

 

Took the same tiff image into photoshop used Star exterminator to get this much improved version

 

 

One of my problems with Starnet++ has always been the matrix artefact where bright stars were removed, like this

 

 

with starXterminator that is just not an issue (the sales pitch does reference this specific issue)

 

I have a lot more trialling to do with it but it sure looks promising.

 

See what you think.

 

 

Starnet does leave some quite bad artefacts at times. The secret is not to fully stretch your image before applying Starnet in Pixinsight. The Star exterminator seems to do a great job, can you remove the stars and recombine them with this plugin?

Edited September 15, 2021 by AstronomyUkraine

[Carastro]

System requirements:

• Windows verson 8.1 or later
• Photoshop CS4 or later (64-bit)

Counts me out then. W10 and CS3

 

Carole 

[Dmack1]

4 minutes ago, AstronomyUkraine said:

Starnet does leave some quite bad artefacts at times. The secret is not to fully stretch your image before applying Starnet in Pixinsight. The Star exterminator seems to do a great job, can you remove the stars and recombine them with this plugin?

Hi Brian, honestly I've tried all that with starnet but always end up spending ages dealing with the blotches. This new plugin seems very impressive. 

 

Yes, there is a detailed simple procedure to put the stars back in the linked page.

[AstronomyUkraine]

1 minute ago, Dmack1 said:

Hi Brian, honestly I've tried all that with starnet but always end up spending ages dealing with the blotches. This new plugin seems very impressive. 

 

Yes, there is a detailed simple procedure to put the stars back in the linked page.

Only one problem, I don't use Photoshop for my images and converting to Tiff, then bringing them back into Pixinsight to finish processing is a bit of a pain. Once I convert an image into Tiff, I lose a lot of the image properties associated with the xisf file.

[AstronomyUkraine]

12 minutes ago, Carastro said:

System requirements:

• Windows verson 8.1 or later
• Photoshop CS4 or later (64-bit)

Counts me out then. W10 and CS3

 

Carole 

Hi Carole. Seems there is a free version of CS4 for download on this site, and it works with Windows 10.

 

https://www.filehorsefile.com/download-adobe-photoshop-cs4/

[Dmack1]

2 minutes ago, AstronomyUkraine said:

Only one problem, I don't use Photoshop for my images and converting to Tiff, then bringing them back into Pixinsight to finish processing is a bit of a pain. Once I convert an image into Tiff, I lose a lot of the image properties associated with the xisf file.

Oh well, not for you either then i guess. I already juggle between PI and PS and I dont even know what lmage properties are associated with the xisf or what knowing them would allow me to do better. 😆So for me this could be a fantastic addition.

[AstronomyUkraine]

1 minute ago, Dmack1 said:

Oh well, not for you either then i guess. I already juggle between PI and PS and I dont even know what lmage properties are associated with the xisf or what knowing them would allow me to do better. 😆So for me this could be a fantastic addition.

It would be nice if this guy could make the same plugin for PI, because Starnet was launched as a bit of a gimmick IMO, and has never improved since it's first release.

[MarkAR]

Looks like it works a lot better, get it sorted for PI ASAP.

[Alex Woronow]

Just the above question: Has anyone had success implementing StarXTerminator on CS6 of lower?

Alex

[PeterBolt]

Brilliant, thanks for the tip off I will definitely give this a try 👍

[geoflewis]

I've just tried this in Affinity Photo. Seems to work very well. The below are fully processed image of M90 from earlier this year, a starless version using StarX and a stars only version by duplicating the original image as a layer, then using subtract blend mode on the StarX layer.

Using StarX on the fully processed image isn't what one would normally do, but I wanted to just see if it works. I'm sure that this new tool will be a great addition to my DSO processing workflow. It would probably have made processing that horrible saturated star at the top left much easier to handle.