1. Bring up the Select/Color Range tool.
2. Click on a bright star that is burned-out to white.
3. Adjust the fuzziness slider to 150 to 200. Some experimentation may be required for best results.
4. Use the Select/Feather tool with a feather radius of 2 pixels.
5. Apply the minimum filter tool - Filter/Other/Minimum - with a radius of 1 pixel.
6. Deselect the stars - Select/Deselect.
The two images below were cropped from the same image before and after using a single iteration of this method. The brightest stars have more color, a less sharply defined edge, and the brightness of the dimmer stars is preserved. On some images, two iterations of this procedure works well.
Before:
After:
All the images used in this site are © Copyright 2004 by Dean Jacobsen.
Any use of these images without the prior written consent or knowledge of the author is strictly prohibited.
Contact Dean at Webmaster for more information.
Last modified on 04/23/2006
