Technique to mask star with diffraction spikes

[pja]

I have been using star mask to select/mask stars, but the diffraction spikes from bright stars are not included.   I can use clone stamps to manually add those into mask but that is time consuming and non-ideal.  I wonder people have already figured out how to do it? 

The purpose is to separate stars with spikes so I can stretch the nebula further.

Thanks for the help.

[jkmorse]

Have you tried using as clone mask instead?  That will mirror the primary image and, if inverted, should cover the stars and spikes (especially if you stretch it a bit), though you may need to address the underlying target separately, again using the clone stamp or a pixelmath solution.

Hope that helps,

Jim