Heart Nebula - Bortle 8 Sky (Portland, Downtown)

Hi Marc, I like both but I'm trying to get a mix of both...the right balance between signal & noise...I'm still trying to figure out how to stay right above the noise without killing the detail...

I'm enjoying StarTools quite a lot. It's getting me to think differently about processing...I spent more time look at the whole picture before mathematically going through the number & steps...it's getting me a bit closer to process intuitively the image vs. analytically. I'm still learning the tool, so I'm finding myself going back to Pixinsight and Astrotools in Photoshop to do some stuff, but it's more due to my lack of practice with StarTools than anything else. I'm not sure StarTools can do everything that other tools can do (I just don't know), but it's getting me to think differently about processing and I'm enjoying a lot that part of it.