I came across some interesting software called “StarNet++” which allows you to remove stars from your astronomy photos with retaliative ease.
Nikita Misiura’s Orginal Update on StarNet++
https://www.astrobin.com/397290/
Software Download off Sourceforge.net https://sourceforge.net/projects/starnet/
The How-To Guide on Cloudy Nights
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/651745-starnet-star-removing-software/
AstroBackyard’s Guide on StarNet++
https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/
So of Course I had to test it on the toughest star-filled photo I had… The Veil Nebula… now I started with my original photo which you can see here and I converted it to the required 16-BIT TIFF format.
Drag and Drop the file on “rgb_starnet++.exe” and got the following output…
Okay so its not the prettiest job every, unsurprising given how that region of space is so compact with stars… I’m not sure if there is a way to change parameters to maybe get a better output.
However, I decided to combine the Star filled photo and the starless photo together with some curve adjustments on the starless photo get the a surprising good (and improved) final photo…
WOW! Thank you Nikita Misiura!
The final result is I was really able to pull out the nebulousity of the veil nebula, something I wasn’t able to do before because the stars ended up brighting as well! I’m going to give this treatment to a few photos now and see the results!
Some Additional Images I reprocessed from the Originals using the StarNet++ Technique to boost the (each image had a different adjustment method to recombine the stars with the starless images).
Final Note: There is a Pixinsight plug-in for StarNet++, however when I gave it a try it seems to “hang” the program while its working. At a certain point I think one test it “froze” so I’d suggest taking the extra step for now and exporting the 16-Bit Tiff and running it separately and then re-importing the starless file back to Pixinsight or to Adobe for further processing.
The Sourceforge download link is gone. As of a few minutes ago you can’t get this at Sourceforge at all. I hope somebody can find an alternative link for this.
https://www.starnetastro.com/