Pixinsight tutorial! Reduce Star Size Tip!

In this Pixinsight tutorial we'll look at one way of making your star size smaller. If you're like most astrophotographers you'll have some images with a lot of stars, maybe bloated or just overwhelming the main subject of your image. This Pixinsight tip will help improve your astrophotography images and it's pretty simple to do. Join me as I demonstrate how it's done!
Some of my gear...
Skywatcher Esprit 100 F5.5 Triplet refractor telescope bit.ly/36w1F7Y
Moravian G3 16200EC CCD w/ 5 position FW bit.ly/2PL0qvK
William Optics Zenithstar APO refractor telescope bit.ly/2JRM1tR
QHY168C 16mp cooled cmos camera bit.ly/2NkkKTb
Optolong L-R-G-B 2" filters bit.ly/32a9Gfu
Optolong L-eNhance filter bit.ly/32a9Gfu
Optolong L-pro filter bit.ly/32a9Gfu
Triad Quadband Ultra Filter bit.ly/2CbQXWh
Skywatcher EQ mount bit.ly/2C9lap1
Skywatcher Star Adventurer bit.ly/2C9Fwyi
Pegasus Astro Focus Cube bit.ly/2qonGow
Orion Starshoot Autoguider bit.ly/34z6pbh
My website: VisibleDark.ca
Clear skies!

[@kryff1]

Wow! Thanks Shawn, This is amazing, Stars look fantastic. Thanks for another brilliant video!

[@captbuscemi]

Thanks so much Shawn! Star Mask and MT are my twin nemeses in Pixinsight, this method seems like a really worthwhile addition to my workflow 👍🏻

[@shorty1474]

Brilliant video Shawn, thanks for the tips!!! Keep "em coming, my god do I need them!!

[@JohnMcGFrance]

Thanks Shawn. I’m learning a lot from your channel. Much appreciated. Clear skies.

[@RaysAstrophotography]

Excellent Shawn! This is an awesome tutorial!

[@rodbell4222]

Amazing...I'm new to Pixinsight so all this blows me away. My images are really doing well now, especially the Hubble palette look! Thank you!

[@astrojourneyuk]

I've just tried this now and it works really well! I experimented and applied it a couple of times and it reduced the stars to where I wanted them. Thanks!

[@Muttboom27]

Very well presented. Helped me see some of my errors. Specifically the use of "erosion".

[@astrojourneyuk]

Thanks for this video. I will give this a try later.

[@paulking6293]

Thanks for your video Shawn, much appreciated

[@bobsastrophotography7812]

Thanks Shawn for another tutorial working in PixInSight & reducing stars. I'm gonna say again, Trevor Jones inspired me to buy all kinds of equipment (scopes, cameras, filters etc.) to get into Astrophotography, but after taking images I was intimidated by processing them (masks & my lack of understanding them & applying them). You Shawn, have been my inspiration into processing my images with confidence now. Still a little intimidation, but way more confidence & guts to give a try the tools you have instructed the Astrophotography World on. Just in one week I have processed 3 plus images which are getting a lot of likes & I have you to thank because you made your tutorials thorough, but simple. You & Chuck from Chucks Astrophotography I have followed best because you don't make your tutorials complicated & fast. You & Chuck are awesome people & I thank you personally for sharing your knowledge & experience with all of us whom are trying to better our processing skills. God Bless, Thanks For Sharing & Clear Skies My Brother In Astrophotography....

[@VisibledarkAstro]

Hi Bob! Wow, thank you for the kind words. It means a lot to me. Glad the tutorials have been helpful! Clear skies!

[@LogansChristmasLights]

Excellent video. This technique worked a treat on my Running Chicken nebula image

[@DeepSpaceDad]

Great video, 10/10, will use this technique!

[@karcoms]

Whoa man, amazing video, I did this on my Orion and horsehead, world of a difference. Thank you.

[@lytharius3234]

really good method

[@travelanddrones]

Excellent video!! Thks

[@tamrich7762]

Thanks Shawn for another fine video on Pixinsight tips,my favourite was ,I've got Pixinsight game,keep up the good work 👍

[@EricMilewski]

Good video, Thanks!

[@pupperemeritus9189]

this is extremely useful

[@bendena0jones]

This looks good and curious how it compares with deconvolution - my current method.

[@victorbasile9679]

Thanks a lot from Brazil

[@robertsonmiller]

Really helpful. I could never figure this out on my own. One question, do you recommend doing this before or after adding the luminance layer?

[@SkyShedPODTeam]

Cooll! It's about time I started making my stars smaller! I'll use this tomorrow :)

[@piercechance1085]

Instablaster.

[@kayedsss]

Thank you very much

[@VisibledarkAstro]

You are welcome

[@danielboisvert-couture5429]

Wow that just changed my life LOL amazing, thank you so much

[@VisibledarkAstro]

Cool! Thanks for watching. Cheers

[@johnadastra1754]

Thanks for the tips! Sometimes MorphologicalTranformation does things to my images where the small background stars seem to all turn into one size, and the whole image looks peppery or scatter shot. Creating a star mask including smaller stars can fix this somewhat, but any comments would be appreciated.

[@DarkArtsAstrophotography]

Isn't this timely. I've been working on a project of M31 built up from multiple imaging sessions from the last couple of years. Needless to say, this field has a lot of bright stars that I would love to tame. I tried a processing of it yesterday, and while I'm happy with the overall results, I wasn't too happy with my star reduction. I'm in the middle of processing it again, and once I get to my star reduction part of my workflow, I'm going to try this technique out.

[@DarkArtsAstrophotography]

@@VisibledarkAstro It worked really well. Tightened the stars nicely. Although I'm working on V3 of my image now and I think this will be the "gold edition".

[@Dyno05]

I’m going to try this tonight. Besides reducing star size, I think it may help with reducing ugly colored star halos.

[@gregmckay666]

Hey Shawn, I see this video is from Nov 2019. Would you say this is roughly the same thing that the newer Star Deemphasizer tool by AstroSwell does?

[@TiagoRamos79]

Good afternoon, is this process done right after Streck? And Noise Redution?

[@anilrao1964]

Hello Shawn, How to activate the RGB values on the tab? these values doesn’t move from zero, tried many ways it's not working. I am using Pi 1.8.8.7 version.

[@frankbraker]

Can this be used for fixing coma in images?

[@toddnoseworthy1447]

In some images, stars aren't perfect and a process like the one you describe here (which works well) still results in halos. IS there a way to reduce them as well?

[@agusbrollo]

you got halos on your stars? are you using an achromatic telescope?

[@messier7849]

@@agusbrollo probably using a filter like the L-Extreme.

[@springy120453]

Thanks a lot, my IC 443 looks a lot better with reduced stars.

[@shawnnielsen]

IMPORTANT!! This is Shawn of Visibledark Astrophotography... An FYI for subscribers... my channel was hacked and I'm locked out from admin of it. Cannot upload new videos or edit or don't receive emails for new comments. I am not getting any help from KZbin currently. They don't seem to have any support in place to help. So I'm not sure what I can do or what to do but I wanted to let folks know. I may have to start over sadly. :(

[@agastrophotos]

👍

[@NicholasHadlerA]

would something like StarNet++ be even better for creating a star mask?

[@agusbrollo]

i use it and combine it with pixinsight and its pretty good

[@expatca4444]

Actually its pronounced like " Rohehlioh Bernal Andreoh" 😁😁😁

[@VisibledarkAstro]

Thanks for this! Now I know! :)