An introduction to StarTools

Reveal detail and reduce noise with this easy-to-use toolkit

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There's a vast array of astronomy image-processing software on the market, often with high initial or monthly costs coupled with a steep learning curve.

StarTools offers a full suite of easy-to-use functions that take a basic stacked image and transform it, for a reasonably modest one-off licence fee. A free trial period is available, so you can decide whether it works for you (though you can only save your final image once you've purchased the licence).

All of the functions in StarTools are operated by sliders, with a live view shown in the main window, making it very simple to get to grips with if you're new to image processing. For this walkthrough, we'll use two key tools: High Dynamic Range (HDR) and noise reduction (NR) – powerful features that can dramatically improve your final results. We used a bi-colour image of the Jellyfish Nebula, IC 443, that had been freshly stacked in DeepSkyStacker.

Start the StarTools application and click ‘Open’ to select the stacked image you want to process. StarTools accepts uncompressed TIFs, PNGs and FITS, so make sure your stacked start image is saved in the correct format.