How much does BlurXTerminator cost?

$100 from RC Astro for a permanent licence, or $190 for the bundle with NoiseXTerminator and StarXTerminator. There is a free trial.

Does BlurXTerminator work in Photoshop?

No. It runs in PixInsight and in RC Astro's stand-alone command-line tool; RC Astro says deconvolution needs linear data, so it will not come to Photoshop.

What computer does it need?

A modern CPU with AVX instructions, and PixInsight 1.8.9-3 or later on Windows 10 (22H2) or later, macOS 14 or later, or Linux. A GPU speeds it up: automatic on a Mac, extra set-up on Windows and Linux.

Are upgrades included?

The licence never expires. Minor releases are free, and so are major versions released within a year of buying; RC Astro may charge for a later major version.

Does it make up detail?

RC Astro designed it to recover detail that is in the data without inventing any. Some imagers still question it; I see the jump in detail as a testament to how good it is.

Is there a free alternative?

GraXpert is free and now has its own deconvolution, though BlurXTerminator is still the tool that changes my images most.

What have I not tested on the BlurXTerminator?

The walk-through ran on a crop of my finished North America Nebula JPEG, not on a linear stack, so it shows the controls and the effect on stars rather than a full processing run.

BlurXTerminator review: astro's biggest game changer

Where does it rank on our leaderboard

Nine of the 16 software on my board, against price
Rank	Software	Stars for Your Buck	Recorded UK price
1	Stellarium	100 out of 100	Free
2	NINA	98 out of 100	Free
3	SharpCap	97 out of 100	£14
5	BlurXTerminator	95 out of 100	£75
6	PHD2	94 out of 100	Free
10	Siril	88 out of 100	Free
12	ASIStudio	82 out of 100	Free
15	DeepSkyStacker	71 out of 100	Free
16	Adobe Photoshop	67 out of 100	£22

Contents

01 Where does it rank on our leaderboard
02 Specifications and features
03 A walk through BlurXTerminator
04 Raw against finished
05 In my words
06 Watch it in my videos
07 Should you buy it?
08 Questions and more about this review

In 30 seconds

Stars for Your Buck 95/100

Reviewed 30 Sep 2026 Updated 2 Oct 2026

Rank: #5 of 16 software
Verdict: Damon's pick

Written by Damon Scotting 4 min read

Buy it if

You want tighter, sharper stars and more detail in your deep-sky images.
Your stars come out bloated or teardrop-shaped at the edges of the frame, for example from back focus a few millimetres out.
You want the one tool that changes your results the most.

Skip it if

You would rather not spend this much on a single processing tool.
You are uneasy about machine-learning sharpening adding detail to your images.

BlurXTerminator is the biggest game changer ever released for astrophotography, and nothing else you can buy changes my results as much.

RC Astro $100

Specifications and features

Against the processing software I have reviewed

Compare with

BlurXTerminator reviewed #5 of 16	GraXpert #4 of 16	NoiseXTerminator #8 of 16	PixInsight #14 of 16
Recorded UK price	£75	Free	£45	£258
Stars for Your Buck	95/100	96/100	92/100	76/100
Made by	RC Astro	The GraXpert Development Team	RC Astro	Pleiades Astrophoto (Spain)
What it is for	Machine-learning deconvolution: sharpens stars and nonstellar detail separately and corrects coma, astigmatism, trefoil, defocus, chromatic aberration, motion blur from guiding errors and seeing variation	Removing gradients and denoising; deconvolution in the 3.1 prerelease only	Machine-learning noise reduction for astrophotographs, with separate strengths for brightness and colour noise in fine and coarse detail	Processing astrophotographs
Licence	$100, permanent; free trial; bundle of three $190	Free and open source (GPL-3.0)	$60, permanent; free trial; bundle of three $190	€300 outside the EU; 45-day free trial
Runs in	PixInsight 1.8.9-3 or later; RC Astro stand-alone command-line tool. Not Photoshop or Affinity Photo	not recorded	PixInsight 1.8.9-3 or later, Photoshop CC or later, Affinity Photo 2.0 or later, RC Astro stand-alone command-line tool	not recorded
Operating systems	Windows 10 (22H2) or later, macOS 14 or later, Linux	Windows, macOS (Intel and Apple silicon), Linux	Windows 10 (22H2) or later, macOS 12 or later, Linux (PixInsight and the stand-alone tool)	Windows 11, macOS 26 and 15, Linux
Computer	A modern CPU with AVX instructions; GPU acceleration automatic on a Mac, extra set-up on Windows and Linux	not recorded	A modern CPU with AVX instructions; GPU acceleration automatic on a Mac, extra set-up on Windows and Linux	not recorded
Current version	2.6.9 (7 Sep 2026), RC Astro's unified tools	3.0.2 stable; 3.1.0 release candidate 2 prerelease	2.6.9 (7 Sep 2026), RC Astro's unified tools	1.9.4 Lockhart
Version pictured	2.0.4 with AI 4 in my screenshots; 2.0.0 with AI 4 in my video	not recorded	2.3.3 with AI 3 in my screenshots	not recorded

A walk through BlurXTerminator

Before A crop of my North America Nebula before BlurXTerminator, at one to one.

After The same crop after one run at the settings shown: the stars are smaller and tighter, the dust lanes crisper.

The controls Stars and nonstellar detail are sharpened separately, with a slider for star halos and the PSF found automatically. Version 2.0.4 with AI 4.

Raw against finished

In my words

The 1 target, the unprocessed side against my finished image, each with its integration, the camera and the palette:

Andromeda Galaxy (M31): 3 h 34 min of light, Unknown, the combined colour stack straight from the stacker

“For me this is the biggest game changer ever released for astrophotography. The before and after shots on RC Astro's site say it all, but I cannot overstate what it has done for my own images. Early on I often got my back focus wrong by a few millimetres, which left bloated, teardrop-shaped stars around the edges of the frame. That is the kind of image you either abandon or crop by twenty percent. BlurXTerminator not only tightens and sharpens every star, it repairs those edge stars too, and it can rescue shots you would otherwise bin. It is so good that some people question whether it is ethical, because the jump in detail makes them wonder if it is inventing structure that isn't there. I see that as a testament to how good it is rather than a flaw. You can dial the sharpening up or down to taste, and I like to push it hard. It is expensive for a single tool, but nothing else you can buy changes your results as much.”

From my dictated take

“This is how my image of Andromeda looked before I used BlurX versus after. It's so good it can almost be referred to as a cheat code, that's how stark the difference is between using it and not.”

From my GraXpert video

Watch it in my videos

How to HUGLEY IMPROVE your Astro images in under 2-Minutes! (Seestar S30 /GraXpert / Telescope Live) · published 17 November 2024 · 9:28 · Watch on YouTube · 67,911 views, 1,833 likes on 2 Oct 2026

Jump to

2:35 GraXpert's deconvolution
3:03 BlurXTerminator in PixInsight
3:22 GraXpert against BlurXTerminator

Transcript of the video 153 words · 3 chapters · searchable

Press a time stamp to play from there.

2:55 GraXpert's deconvolution

2:56 greeted with this message now deconvolution is an unbelievably helpful method that helps remove the blur or Distortion in your images caused by atmospheric disturbance or your own

3:03 BlurXTerminator in PixInsight

3:03 Optics the most powerful demonstration of this tool is currently Russell Croman's BlurXTerminator available for just under $100 is a feature I've used a lot 3:12 when editing in PixInsight this is how my image of Andromeda looked before I used BlurX versus after it's so good it can almost be referred to as a cheat 3:20 code that's how stark the difference is between using it and not well the new GraXpert deconvolution tool isn't as powerful but it's still very capable of

3:22 GraXpert against BlurXTerminator

3:28 sharpening your images with the $100 BlurX tool it determines your FWHM for you but GraXpert asks you to input this information yourself the FWHM refers to 3:38 the full width half maximum and you can find this out even through the use of

Should you buy it?

95/100 Stars for Your Buck

Pros

It tightens and sharpens every star in the frame.
It repairs bloated, teardrop-shaped edge stars, so a frame you would have cropped or binned can be saved.
You can dial the sharpening up or down to taste, and it takes being pushed hard.
The jump in detail is so big that people question whether it is real: I take that as a sign of how good it is.

Cons

It is expensive for a single tool.
Some imagers question whether the extra detail is ethical, and worry that it invents structure.

Expensive for one tool, but nothing else you can buy changes your results as much.

Three alternatives I have reviewed

Questions and more about this review

Reviewed by

Damon Scotting

The Telescope Man Verified

BSc (Hons) Physics with Astrophysics and Cosmology, Loughborough University PGCE / QTS, University of Nottingham

About Damon About Damon Damon Scotting is The Telescope Man. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Physics with Astrophysics and Cosmology from Loughborough University and a PGCE with QTS from the University of Nottingham, and taught physics in secondary schools before becoming an astronomy creator. He is a contributing writer for BBC Sky at Night Magazine and the author of 42 Wonders of Our Night Sky, and his photograph of the galaxy M100 with the dwarf planet Ceres was Highly Commended in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2024 competition run by Royal Observatory Greenwich. He has appeared on the BBC's Blue Peter. More than 750,000 people follow his astronomy channels on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, and he has reviewed more than 140 telescopes, mounts, cameras, filters and accessories hands-on for this site. More about Damon · How I test · Damon's book

I review all kinds of gear: most of it I buy, some is gifted and some is loaned, and all of it is reviewed the same way. How this site is funded

Seven questions, answered

Questions about the BlurXTerminator

Reviewed 30 September 2026 ·Updated 2 October 2026

I review all kinds of gear. Most of it I buy, some is gifted and some is loaned, and all of it is reviewed the same way: no company sees or approves a review before it is published. How this site is funded

How much does BlurXTerminator cost? $100 from RC Astro for a permanent licence, or $190 for the bundle with NoiseXTerminator and StarXTerminator. There is a free trial. The specifications and the comparison table ↓
Does BlurXTerminator work in Photoshop? No. It runs in PixInsight and in RC Astro's stand-alone command-line tool; RC Astro says deconvolution needs linear data, so it will not come to Photoshop. The specifications and the comparison table ↓
What computer does it need? A modern CPU with AVX instructions, and PixInsight 1.8.9-3 or later on Windows 10 (22H2) or later, macOS 14 or later, or Linux. A GPU speeds it up: automatic on a Mac, extra set-up on Windows and Linux. The specifications and the comparison table ↓
Are upgrades included? The licence never expires. Minor releases are free, and so are major versions released within a year of buying; RC Astro may charge for a later major version. The specifications and the comparison table ↓
Does it make up detail? RC Astro designed it to recover detail that is in the data without inventing any. Some imagers still question it; I see the jump in detail as a testament to how good it is. In my words ↓
Is there a free alternative? GraXpert is free and now has its own deconvolution, though BlurXTerminator is still the tool that changes my images most.
What have I not tested on the BlurXTerminator? The walk-through ran on a crop of my finished North America Nebula JPEG, not on a linear stack, so it shows the controls and the effect on stars rather than a full processing run.