As seen from the subject line I would like to isolate the stars from one copy of an image and then add those stars to a starless copy of that same image, presumably using PixelMath. Here's what I am doing so far....
1. I'm creating a starless copy of the image using well-know common methods with star masks and MT and MMT.
2. I am isolating the stars from the original image by saving a copy of the image to Photoshop CS5 as a TIFF file, creating a luminosity mask and with it producing a black and white image that has an all black background with white stars including the glows around each star. Luminosity masks will create these very well. (I know that a similar result can be achieved using the Pin Light blend in Photoshop, but the stars do not show their glows with this method and become these tiny, very sharp, constricted circles which do not look natural.)
3. I import this new stars-only image back into Pixinsight, and now I'm trying to figure it how to use this image like a star mask which I can place on the original image and somehow copy the original stars onto my starless version of that image with their glows.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to do this? Or, if you have another approach to get the same result I would be very grateful if you could share it.
Thanks very much,
Rudy
