deconvolution- success?

[astrodoc71]

I'm processing an image of M13. 1st time using PI. I noticed when using either deconvolution or morphologic transformation and a basic star mask, I could not see a darn thing happening. I used the mask first with default settings and then changed them a bit. I think maybe in MT I saw a slight star shrinking but very little. I then took the mask totally off and did a 50 iteration deconvolution and got a pretty smooth sharpening effect with no significant artifacts?! I don't see any ringing to speak of or anything else. I mean it looks pretty good to me. So I guess I'm surprised that it came out as clean as it did with no mask? Interestingly, after deconvolving I went back to MT and using the mask with 1 iteration it actually showed more of a change (for the better) than it did on the raw image? Perhaps it's the nature of the object then? Just curious

[Warhen]

Hey Doc, In the spirit of covering all our bases, you're making sure that elements you want affected by a change are revealed by white in the mask? If not, just invert the mask to conceal w/ black what you don't want affected. If this isn't the issue, I'm surprised as you were the decon yielded a good result. It generally takes a deringing support star mask, a range or luminance mask to protect desired areas and the dialing in of some rather specific settings to not end up with goulash! Also, Decon is appropos for linear stages, while I'd reserve Morphological for after nonlinear stretches. Let us know more.