STARSCAPE
Photographer's judgment, turned into a tool / 3-month free trial
More time disappears
after the shot than during it.
If you're burning out on the same decisions every time, it's faster to encode those decisions into a tool.
Sidekick is a set of practical tools for photographers that gradually take over the
enormous volume of decisions that follow a shoot.
Star landscape, light-stacking, mask processing — not presets. Judgment support.
No credit card required · Install by unzipping
Not presets — judgment support
Culling, masking, compositing — let the tool take over the decisions you keep repeating.
Light-stacking in one click
Automates multi-frame light-stacking from end to end. Eliminates hesitation over steps and processing errors, even with large batches of star material.
Auto mask generation
Generates star masks and sky masks automatically. Sky/ground separation, light pollution correction — decisions you used to agonize over, handled in one step.
Unified workflow
Consolidates scattered processing steps into a single script. Pushes the time you used to spend re-deciding everything from scratch toward zero.
Before and after Sidekick
Processing the same material takes less time and fewer decisions.
BEFORE
Without Sidekick
- Looking up light-stacking steps every session
- Remaking masks by hand multiple times
- Stalling on light pollution correction decisions
- Repeating the same operation on dozens of frames
- More time developing than shooting
AFTER
With Sidekick
- Light-stacking finished with one button
- Sky and star masks generated automatically
- Light pollution correction becomes a defined routine
- Script handles large frame batches
- Time saved on decisions goes into the creative work
Try it free for 3 months.
Reading about it will only get you so far. Download it, run it on your own material, and see whether it fits your workflow.
No credit card · Just add to Photoshop · Purchase price ¥9,800 (tax included)
Sidekick Series — All Products
Three modules, each built for a different genre.
PORTRAIT
Sidekick Portrait
For portrait. Guides skin, color, and dimensionality toward your intended direction. A Sidekick for portrait processing.
90-day free trial
¥4,800 (tax included)
SKY EFFECT
Sidekick Sky Effect
For sky expression. Streamlines cloud, light, and sky impression work for sky-led finishing.
30-day free trial
¥980 (tax included)
🏆 Developer's photography credentials
Ichiro Murata — 1X Award-winning photographer (including Top 5)
1X is one of the world's most selective curated photography platforms — only a few percent of submitted works are accepted. Murata has won Award ×5 across architecture and fine art categories, including Top 5 selections.
Sidekick grew from the same eye and judgment behind that work.
Featured Award Work — click to enlarge
"Selected and awarded on 1X — one of the world's most curated photography platforms. The judgment behind the lens is the same judgment behind Sidekick."
1985
ORIGIN — Where the technology began
It started not with viewing images,
but with generating and analyzing them.
While studying at Tokai University's School of Marine Science and Technology, Murata participated as an external research student at the Mikio Takagi Laboratory, University of Tokyo Institute of Industrial Science. The theme was thermal infrared image processing from NOAA weather satellites.
The core of the research: extracting motion vectors of warm water masses from two satellite images taken at different times, and visualizing early signs of El Niño. Language: PL/I. Hardware: frame buffer image processor (512×512). Images were generated line by line, drawn onto a CRT.
Processing time: about 1–2 minutes per image. Other universities needed hours or a full day for equivalent work — this was genuinely cutting-edge. Results were presented at the Television Society of Japan (1986).
"Converting invisible phenomena into images through computation"
— This idea is the essence of what Sidekick does.
— This idea is the essence of what Sidekick does.
System configuration (1985)
📡 NOAA satellite reception (parabolic antenna)
↓
💾 9-track magnetic tape recording
↓
🖥 PL/I processing (Fujitsu FACOM)
↓
📺 Frame buffer → NTSC CRT display
↓
📷 Polaroid / slide film capture
Then → Now
Frame buffer
→
GPU
PL/I
→
Python / JavaScript
Block matching
→
Optical Flow / AI
Magnetic tape
→
Cloud
CRT photography (film)
→
Screen capture
1986 – c.2006
Phase 2 — As a circuit designer
Designing the "color" of television
as a circuit, into mass production.
Joined Toshiba Audio Video Engineering Co., Ltd. (Toshiba AVE) as a 5th-cohort hire. Assigned to Toshiba Fukaya Factory in Saitama Prefecture — an integrated line from TV and VTR design through mass production.
Primary role: design and mass production of V/C/D ICs for consumer televisions — a chip integrating Video, Chroma, and Deflection circuits. Deflection (sync) and I²C-BUS were his main responsibilities, handled from design through evaluation through production handoff for about 20 years.
In the 4:3 CRT era, the "color and brightness" in Japan's living rooms was designed and shipped from this line.
Around 2006, after roughly 20 years as an engineer, he went independent.
Large-format mountain photography, which he had started before that,
shifted to digital with the Nikon D1 released in 1999.
He has worked as a photographer ever since.
VCD IC — Areas of responsibility
V
VIDEO
Luminance signal processing
C
CHROMA
Color difference / saturation
D
DEFL.
Sync / deflection
Primary
I²C
BUS
Control bus design
Primary
ICs went into mass production
and shipped in millions of consumer TVs
and shipped in millions of consumer TVs
1985 → 2006 → NOW
Turning invisible ocean movement into numbers from satellite imagery.
Designing the signal of "color" as a circuit for television.
Selecting "the moment of light" as a photographer.
All of it shares one thing: the judgment of what to keep and what to discard from an enormous amount of information.
Sidekick is an attempt to put that judgment outside, into a tool.