Cheers for the info lads.
I'll defo do as ye suggest.
One thing...
maybe it's a big no no but I think it's made
my images look better....
When you talk about 'noise'
I basically 'erase' any hot / cold pixels in PS
coz I work in JPG.
THEN,
I find sometimes (with some shots) that if you create
a second layer and Gaus. blur it, say about 25-30%
then mix the origional and the blurred one together,
it makes for that 'Milky' look you say.
Just a tip.
I found by mesing around with some shots...
Your technique is one which will always make the final image look a lot better. It's not just about making the image smoother, although that will also be the end result too of upping the signal/noise ratio. The real benefit of getting a lot more exposures is it will greatly increase the detail in your image. This also becomes a lot more important with DSLR's since they don;t have cooling to reduce the noise in the individual subframes.
  