Do it once, do it right

Physics and applied mathematics demand that some operations are done in a particular order. No ifs, no buts. Certain operations have one specific place in a sound signal flow, yet others have less rigid sequence requirements. Whichever your processing decisions, they are worked into the equation in a mathematically congruent way.

The most elegant equation is often the shortest one. In StarTools, you refine the final equation like a sculptor would refine a coarse piece of marble into a sculpture; from coarse gestures to fine tweaks. Module functionality does not overlap in StarTools; you will never be correcting one module's output with another module that does-the-same-thing-but-differently. I.e. the engine's goal is to "tack on" to the equation as little as possible, and to rather tweak its present form and variables as much as possible.

Less is more. The shorter solution is the better solution. The best part is no part. Endless tweaking is not a thing in StarTools, and all decisions and module invocations are meant to be done with a clear direction, decisiveness and purpose. Feeling a sense of closure on an image is a feature, not a bug.

A good example of the "do it once, do it right" philosophy that StarTools' engine affords, is its approach to noise reduction. In StarTools you don't need to "help" any of the algorithms by noise reducing earlier in your workflow and passing them noise reduced versions of your datasets. All modules are fully noise-aware. As such, in StarTools, noise is an aesthetic consideration only. Noise grain only becomes a problem if it is visible and aesthetically objectionable. Therefore noise reduction is only applied at the very last moment, when it is at its most visible and most objectionable. In StarTools, you should never apply noise reduction to an unfinished image; any further processing will change your image's noise profile again, invalidating your previous noise reduction decisions and efforts. As such, there is only one noise reduction tool and one noise reduction moment; the one right tool at the one right moment. That is, a tool that models the noise profile in your image with pin-point accuracy, at the very end of your workflow.