How do you "naturally" keep your stars small?

[Sir Canon]

So after adopting the "preprocess all your subs before you stack" i have figured out how to get nice colors from my images. one of the things that i still struggle with is keeping my star size under control. before i got my 70-200 the stars were GIANT even in the subs, but with the 70-200 they are pinpoint dots of light, maybe 4 pixels across.

however as soon as i start pulling on the image from the 70-200 the stars start to swell... a LOT. i end up running some of my star size reduction actions over and over and over again trying to keep them under control. this results in these black rings around the stars, which i can get rid of with one of Anna Morrises actions called "remove "panda eyes"'

i just feel like going through all of this is ridiculous and not the right way.

could some of you please outline some photoshop steps to keep this from going on, and/or pixinsight so PI users can benefit from this as well?

thanks everyone!

 

[JimH123]

So after adopting the "preprocess all your subs before you stack" i have figured out how to get nice colors from my images. one of the things that i still struggle with is keeping my star size under control. before i got my 70-200 the stars were GIANT even in the subs, but with the 70-200 they are pinpoint dots of light, maybe 4 pixels across.

however as soon as i start pulling on the image from the 70-200 the stars start to swell... a LOT. i end up running some of my star size reduction actions over and over and over again trying to keep them under control. this results in these black rings around the stars, which i can get rid of with one of Anna Morrises actions called "remove "panda eyes"'

i just feel like going through all of this is ridiculous and not the right way.

could some of you please outline some photoshop steps to keep this from going on, and/or pixinsight so PI users can benefit from this as well?

thanks everyone!

 

[Sir Canon]

So after adopting the "preprocess all your subs before you stack" i have figured out how to get nice colors from my images. one of the things that i still struggle with is keeping my star size under control. before i got my 70-200 the stars were GIANT even in the subs, but with the 70-200 they are pinpoint dots of light, maybe 4 pixels across.

however as soon as i start pulling on the image from the 70-200 the stars start to swell... a LOT. i end up running some of my star size reduction actions over and over and over again trying to keep them under control. this results in these black rings around the stars, which i can get rid of with one of Anna Morrises actions called "remove "panda eyes"'

i just feel like going through all of this is ridiculous and not the right way.

could some of you please outline some photoshop steps to keep this from going on, and/or pixinsight so PI users can benefit from this as well?

thanks everyone!

--
Campaign to revamp Dpr's image compression!
I tend to overdo things

can you provide any examples? I have a 70-200 f2.8, and even after stretching in Photoshop, the stars remain small.

After stacking in DSS, I use the Autosave.TIF file. It is 32-bits, but only 16-bits of data, so I convert to 16-bits in PS. In the same dropdown that you get to adjust, the is an item right above adjust that let's you change mode, in there is the means to convert to 16 bits.

Then I adjust in baby steps alternating between levels and curves. In levels, I drag the center slider to the left from 0 to about 0.1. And then to curves and drag from the center of the diagonal line upward to the upper left as it goes from 128 to 120. And I repeat this a number of times. I then use this as my adjustment starting point. Bug steps create noise. Many small steps for less noise.

this is a link to the autosave tiff. go ahead and play with it if you want. https://www.dropbox.com/s/03bqhta3vmqbmwo/Autosave112.tif?dl=0

here is an edit with no star size reduction at all.







--
Campaign to revamp Dpr's image compression!
I tend to overdo things

 

[JimH123]

So after adopting the "preprocess all your subs before you stack" i have figured out how to get nice colors from my images. one of the things that i still struggle with is keeping my star size under control. before i got my 70-200 the stars were GIANT even in the subs, but with the 70-200 they are pinpoint dots of light, maybe 4 pixels across.

however as soon as i start pulling on the image from the 70-200 the stars start to swell... a LOT. i end up running some of my star size reduction actions over and over and over again trying to keep them under control. this results in these black rings around the stars, which i can get rid of with one of Anna Morrises actions called "remove "panda eyes"'

i just feel like going through all of this is ridiculous and not the right way.

could some of you please outline some photoshop steps to keep this from going on, and/or pixinsight so PI users can benefit from this as well?

thanks everyone!

--
Campaign to revamp Dpr's image compression!
I tend to overdo things

Not entirely happy with what I did, but the stars didn't change in size. I wanted to enhance the nebula some more and I wasn't getting it.

Looks like you have a good image to work with.

 

[Sir Canon]

REVISION: by using a curve meant to preserve star colors it also keeps them under control. before i was never adding a second control point, so the stars were just getting brighter and brighter!







--
Campaign to revamp Dpr's image compression!
I tend to overdo things

 

[ehanes7612]

REVISION: by using a curve meant to preserve star colors it also keeps them under control. before i was never adding a second control point, so the stars were just getting brighter and brighter!



--
Campaign to revamp Dpr's image compression!
I tend to overdo things

What I learned just before I switched to CCD (where i dont have this issue anymore) is to separate the stars out at the point of the stretch that I liked and have that as my mask (not sure if that is the right term)..continue to stretch the non star image to my liking and then add the star mask ...this is basic LRGB processing ..and there are many tutorials on it..one of my favs is this tutorial, in which he uses a method involving dust and scratches in PS to lower the number of stars and counteract star bloating, while bringing out color from your nebula

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www.lonelyspeck.com

 

[Jon Rista]

So after adopting the "preprocess all your subs before you stack" i have figured out how to get nice colors from my images. one of the things that i still struggle with is keeping my star size under control. before i got my 70-200 the stars were GIANT even in the subs, but with the 70-200 they are pinpoint dots of light, maybe 4 pixels across.

however as soon as i start pulling on the image from the 70-200 the stars start to swell... a LOT. i end up running some of my star size reduction actions over and over and over again trying to keep them under control. this results in these black rings around the stars, which i can get rid of with one of Anna Morrises actions called "remove "panda eyes"'

i just feel like going through all of this is ridiculous and not the right way.

could some of you please outline some photoshop steps to keep this from going on, and/or pixinsight so PI users can benefit from this as well?

thanks everyone!