FREE STANDALONE TOOLS
NightScape Lab vs. StarNet++
StarNet++ is the free answer to star removal, and the results are real. What it isn’t is a Photoshop workflow — it’s a standalone, command-line-grade tool that removes stars and hands the rest back to you.
What StarNet++ does well
StarNet++ is free neural-network star removal, and it genuinely works — clean starless skies that made this whole category of editing accessible before anyone paid for a plugin. It runs standalone (and inside tools like Siril that can drive it), and for a free tool the separation quality is genuinely impressive. A lot of published astro images owe it a credit line.
The difference: a starless file back, vs. layers into your document
StarNet++ is single-purpose and it lives outside Photoshop. Using it means the round trip — export, run, re-import — with command-line-grade ergonomics along the way. It removes stars, full stop: there’s no reduction mode when you want tamer stars instead of none, and what comes back is a file, not layers — reassembling a workable starless-plus-stars edit in your PSD is on you.
NightScape Lab’s Stars tool runs inside the document. Remove or reduce, per image — and the result arrives as a starless layer plus a Star Map layer, already in your PSD, maskable and blendable like anything else in your stack. It’s the third step of the ordered finishing flow, in the same $99 pair of panels that stacked the master in the first place.
What lands in Photoshop
Side-by-side screenshot: (left) StarNet++’s reality — the exported starless TIFF sitting in a file browser, waiting to be re-imported and hand-assembled; (right) the Photoshop Layers panel right after the Lab’s Stars tool — starless + Star Map layers already in the document. Both real captures; the caption compares deliverables, not removal quality.
Who should choose which
Choose StarNet++ if free is the requirement, you’re comfortable with the round trip and the ergonomics, or your workflow already lives in a tool that drives it. The price is unbeatable and the results are real.
Choose NightScape Lab if you edit in Photoshop and want star removal and reduction delivered as layers in your document — as one step of an integrated stack-and-finish workflow, $99 once.
Stars removed — without leaving the document.
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