DeepStarMask for PixInsight
Welcome to DeepStarMask!
DeepStarMask builds a grayscale star mask — an image that is bright where the stars are and dark everywhere else — so we can protect or isolate stars while we process the rest of the frame.
What sets it apart from a conventional star mask is that the coverage of each star is measured from that star’s own light, not stamped from a single global radius. A bright giant with a wide glow gets a large, soft halo; a faint pinpoint stays tight — both from the same settings.
Everything is tuned through the Dynamic Live Preview: a dedicated window that can show the mask applied to our image, the mask in isolation, or the target image alone. We can also zoom-in up to 32x, pan and other useful viewer tools that we can use while the preview is refreshed live as we move the controls. We don’t need to guess what each parameter would do to the mask. We can see them in action, in real time, as we adjust them.
DeepStarMask Dynamic Live Preview
We can examine the mask as we fine-tune it, pan, zoom in and out of the preview, etc.
Try it for free!
DeepStarMask is not free, but you can try it for 30 days, with no feature restrictions!
If you want to use DeepStarMask after the trial period, it's a one-time payment of 6.99 US$. No subscription fees: your copy is yours to keep and use forever. You would also receive free upgrades within the major version you purchased.
All we need to do to install our trial copy is add the DeepStarMask repository to our PixInsight installation:
https://repo.deepskycolors.com/DeepStarMask/
If you need instructions for adding the repository URL to PixInsight, click here
With the repository URL in place, we now do RESOURCES > Updates > Check for Updates. The DeepStarMask process will appear as a candidate for installation, automatically selected. We click Apply.
After that, PixInsight will inform us that the install will happen once we restart PixInsight. We do that, and DeepStarMask will be under PROCESS > DeepSkyColors and PROCESS > MaskGeneration.
DeepStarMask is available for all platforms: Windows, Linux, and macOS (x64 and arm64). PixInsight 1.9.4 or later is required for the macOS arm64 version.
Register your copy, use it forever
DeepStarMask can be registered for personal use under a paid license. If you wish to use DeepStarMask for commercial, business, or organizational purposes, please contact us to discuss appropriate licensing options.
No subscriptions, all free v1.xx updates. Your copy is yours and once registered, it will never be deactivated. You can install and use it on any machine you have also installed PixInsight, for any of the available operating systems (your registration is valid for all offered platforms) or number of installations, as long as they are for you to use.
NOTE: After you make your purchase, you should receive an email from us, usually within 15 minutes. If, after 30 minutes you still haven’t received our message, please check your spam folder. If still nothing, contact us.
DeepStarMask Documentation
DeepStarMask’s full documentation is accessible from within DeepStarMask itself – we just need to click on the Documentation button in DeepStarMask and it will appear in the PixInsight’s Documentation browser . We have also made the same documentation available online, here:
Credits
DeepStarMask was developed using the PixInsight Class Library. Any product derived from the PCL, including DeepStarMask, must reproduce the following acknowledgment:
This product is based on software from the PixInsight project, developed by Pleiades Astrophoto and its contributors (http://pixinsight.com/).
The above statement refers to our use of the PCL to develop DeepStarMask only. DeepStarMask is developed independently, without any relation to or contributions from Pleiades Astrophoto.