A little help with M45

[Chiefsmith]

After a lot of problems with finding M45 and then having my mount stay in sync for more than 8 or so shots, and really cloudy skies most of the time, I finally had three nights of perfect skies and everything worked!!!! I am still learning about the post-processing. Many of my early problems have been solved but I do not know where to even begin to clean up this image.

The image on the right is an enlargement of the circled area. You can see the junk. How do you clean up, or smooth out, all of the fragments?
I have the following software available: PS CS6 with Astronomy Tools v1.6.2, Affinity, GIMP, and Capture One 22.

[Jockinireland]

this looks to me like standard noise. Since you have astronomy Tools in your PS try using the deep space noise reduction.

[gcisko]

this looks to me like standard noise. Since you have astronomy Tools in your PS try using the deep space noise reduction.

Also try the photoshop Noise -> de-speckle option and even Gaussian blur. Despeckling does a bit of Gaussian blur. And yes Astronomy Tools Action Set for photoshop will do the same with Deep Space Noise Reduction and even Space Noise Reduction.

Everyone interested in astroimaging and using photoshop should be looking at Astronomy Tools Action Set and Astroflat Pro.

I never use flats or darks. I should put that in my sig block