New and FREE PixInsight Star Reduction Methods!

In this video we look at Bill Blanshan's new star reduction methods for PixInsight. These are free for download too!
Download Bill's star reduction methods here: amzn.to/3BtiyC6
Bill's YT channel: / @anotherastrochannel2173
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Thanks for watching! Clear skies!

[@SkyShedPODTeam]

Cool Man! Can't wait to try 'em! Glad you're feeling better!

[@anotherastrochannel2173]

Great job Shawn and thanks again for asking me to discuss this process on your channel. I hope this helps your viewers. Keep up the good work! Regards, Bill

[@ttnownow1292]

Thanks so much Shawn and Bill.. You guys are awesome!

[@juansunsundegui5643]

Thank you Shawn and Bill! Great video and process!

[@TheMje1963]

Shawn, Thank you very much for introducing this new method to the world. This looks like it will be a great addition to my work flow.

[@rickbria8420]

Holy cow! People like Bill and Sean and many others Are what makes PixInsight A must have! Thanks so much for these processes and thank you for the demonstration. I can’t wait to try it!

[@MayfieldCreekObservatory]

I have been playing with these methods since last night and I just can’t stop going back and reprocessing my older data. Thanks for showing us this Shawn, and thanks to Bill for his genius in creating these. What a wonderful thing to do for the astrophotography community.

[@derekbaker3279]

Awesome! Thanks for doing this video Shawn!👍👍 I hope your complete recovery from CoVid occurs quickly & I hope you will not experience any longer-term effects! 🙏

[@trevorgreen2232]

Excellent presentation again Shawn and thank you to Bill for his fantastic work .

[@anotherastrochannel2173]

Thanks Trevor!

[@davecurtis8833]

Excellent video Shaun

[@belteberga]

Excellent video! Thanks so much, Bill and Shawn.

[@anotherastrochannel2173]

Thanks for watching!

[@steveleonard2856]

Thank you so much for taking the time to share this Shawn! I am blown away by how well it works and how much an improvement I am getting over EZ Star Reduction. Finally nice soft stars!

[@anotherastrochannel2173]

Thanks Steve!

[@CaptRescue2]

Thanks Shawn, helpful as always!! Appreciate ya hoser!!

[@VisibledarkAstro]

Hosers! 😆 🤣 take off eh! 😆

[@sermoly]

Great Job, amazing

[@Brisbane_Astro]

Been using these for the last couple of weeks and they are spectacular. really lifting my processing game

[@anotherastrochannel2173]

Thanks Chris!

[@manhcuongct05]

Wellcome back Shawn !

[@paulwilson8367]

I'm far from a computer or IT wizard, so I didn't realize that other star reduction methods could be actually "destructive" to the other data. I was interested in this video, so I will for sure give this a try and see if I can get a little better result. It occurs to me that if I use a OSC NB filter, which in the LP suburbs is one of the only ways to shoot a lot of the time, I will not be wanting to "enhance" the star colors because they are skewed. So it's great that there is a different method to use in that case. Currently, I don't know what to do with the off-color stars other than separate and desaturate them and shrink them so that they are simply less noticeable. Of course if you can reshoot with a broadband filter for star color, that's optimal. Thanks for video, this is one of my go to channels for info and technique.

[@LyngJohn205]

This works great. Suddenly star reduction is easy, reliable. Thanks!

[@anotherastrochannel2173]

Thanks John!

[@davidsimard1522]

Thk you

[@CapWebInformatique]

c'est géant ! merci :p

[@trevorworrall1226]

Hi , great update on star reduction , i noticed you had pixmath routines on your process list for "Make HaR " and add Har to RGB do you have any video's covering that ??

[@christianvulpescu1398]

Very interesting. Thank you for that presentation. Shawn, you mentioned a new technic with the reflector to get such greate star colors. I have a 10" Newtonian, too. Could you share that technic in a video, please? Cheers, Christian

[@thepuffybird]

Thanks these look great!

[@Steve-br7wt]

Thanks Shawn! These work great. The only thing I noticed, is when I use the third method, it seemed to cause digital artifacting or maybe it was saturation clipping in some of the darker areas of my photograph. At any rate, methods 1 and 2 worked perfectly. One great thing about this method, is that I'm able to work with the starless image to improve saturation and detail before putting the stars back in. Makes my workflow much easier. :)

[@anotherastrochannel2173]

Steve, that might be one of the reasons why you have artifacts, you really shouldn't change the starless image as it needs to match the image with stars so that the transfers can be identical. If you change the starless then you could create artifacts on your new star reducted image.

[@Steve-br7wt]

@@anotherastrochannel2173 Oh ok, that makes sense.

[@bloodstone2000]

GREAT One Shawn! You know what I like about Bills Pixel-math processes the most With Our particular systems? Is isn't a Destructive Method . One that leads to Totally Obliterating the Diffraction spikes. I noticed it refined my spikes, quite to my surprise.

[@anotherastrochannel2173]

Thank you!

[@bloodstone2000]

@@anotherastrochannel2173 Thank you for Sharing it with us all .. I'm amazed at how it handles diffraction spikes.. It really adds definition with out destructiveness. WELL DONE Bill.. Thanks again.🤘🏻

[@SkyShedPODTeam]

Hey Man. Question. I often remove the stars right after HT, then add them back 2nd to the end. Then run EZ star reduction for final. I should probably watch the video before asking! But! If I do this at the end instead of EZ reduction, and keep doing my early starless-while-processing, I'd be taking my stars out twice. Advise? Pls don't say don't take the stars out earlier. lol And btw, THX Bill! CS!

[@barriegreenwood3150]

Could not get these actions working at all really struggling with them

[@napper1496]

nothing there in amazon link

[@michaellewis5921]

So I must be missing something but I do not see where these scripts can be downloaded from?

[@jamesgoodall3818]

Thanks Shawn! Do you think method 3 of Bill's Star Reduction set to 3 iterations and soft would round up imperfect corner stars a bit? Even after much calibrating of my 8" SCT with HyperStar I'm getting a bit of corner star distortion. Sure would be great...

[@VisibledarkAstro]

Not sure. I don't have any data from a setup like yours to test it. Might help. I had a hyperstsr once and never got the corners pinpoint round. Gave up and sold it. Lol 😆 I'm getting great results now with an 8inch reflector astrograph and the Nexus reducer flattener.

[@richardposener2579]

I can't get this to work. It runs, error free, but there is no change to the size of my stars. Changed the 'S' value numerous times (.2, .02, .5 etc) - the script runs successfully but there are no changes to the sizes of the stars. It must be something simple... Any advice would be appreciated

[@aerozg]

I don't get it. He drags and drops the triangle on the .tif image, not the Starless image. How does this work?

[@srikanthmeg]

This method is actually pretty good. Works better than EZ star reduction for me

[@anotherastrochannel2173]

Thanks!

[@AnnoyingFly]

can u mask some stars to keep them in original size ? i tried and it did not work maybe i did something wrong :)

[@VisibledarkAstro]

I don't believe you can. It's not designed for that approach.

[@mikepaling4736]

Hi Shawn ... great video :-) I would love to try Bills 3 star reduction methods but I am having trouble in loading them into PixInsight :-( When I drag and drop the downloaded file onto the PI screen I get a message saying " 4 new icons had to be renamed due to conflicting identifiers with previously existing icons. Original identifiers have been suffixed as necessary to make them unique" ..... but they do not appear on the main PI screen and cannot be found in the drop down list. Any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong??? Mike

[@VisibledarkAstro]

It loads the icons into workspace 1, top left corner. Have you checked for them in that workspace? You can click on different workspaces at bottom of screen in Pixinsight.

[@mikepaling4736]

@@VisibledarkAstro Hi Shawn ... thanks for your reply. I have just found them thanks ... just where you said they would be :-) I really must find out more on how the Workspaces work and how to use them properly!!!

[@magicker8052]

arghh.. at some point I had created a new "workspace" so i could never find the icons all these "Bill" tutorials were talking about,.. this $$%^%$ programme

[@ChristianProulx]

I am really happy that you have the chance to meet Bill, his working method is incredible. Without denigrating MorpholicTransformation, Bill's tools are very easy to use. I even made a French video on the use of method no.1 with Affinity Photo on my channel (with Bill's permission of course). Nice work Shawn

[@anotherastrochannel2173]

Thanks Christian!