Hello EriK,
It is me that Nik is talking about… I am observant he sky for about 30 years, but doing astrophotography for only 2 years now… I am quite new to it. I haven’t used RP that much to develop raw images… I mainly use more specialized apps… but I use RP for final touch of my tiff or jpg files. I’d be happy to help… I asked Nik to give you my email in private, and if you are willing, I could give a try to one of your images of the Milky Way… As for most of the software, experimentation is the key…