Astroart Forum

I recently started to use AA5 more to processing my mono image. And I was impressed to learn how AA can do comparing to what I used to use in StarTools for my OSC image. I can unsharp mask with "adaptive" option to do deconvolution for dust lane details. Low-pass filter with "Adaptive" option for non-blurred noise reduction. And "Compress Stars" to reduce star blooming.

However, there are some tools that I cannot find in AA5. For example, I need some tools to tame the high intensity core of M81. Hence I wonder if there is similar tools or some a procedure in AA5 to do that.

Also, I noticed that there is no "mask" similar to the the layer mask in Photoshop or StarTools. Did I miss something? I would love to have that for localized processing.

Thanks!

You could try Filters/DDP or Filters/HistogramStretch with Curves (at least two points, for a "N" shape).

There are no masks, but they are on our todo list (not this year BTW). They are really useful for cosmetic processing, especially with soft edges and manual selection.

For HDR, I need to only adjust the core (highlighted area) but not the rest of image. Hence a mask may be handy.

I guess that I just have to use other tools to do at until then. Look forward to the new capability.