Pixinsight newbie.....help!!

[RobH]

Hello all.

After hearing so many endorsements from people I respect for PI, I've got a copy.

I've just been looking at some of Harry's great tutorials, but am still struggling.....is there a written manual anywhere....I need the absolute basics, specifically how to arrange everything, how to use selection tools, how to arrange my toolbars etc etc. Everything I've looked at assumes a certain amount of preknowledge of the program, which I don't have although I understand many of the processes.

For example, I'm trying to use the background neutralisation process, and on the vid a number of preview windows are being drawn with the mouse....how do I do this?

Also, how do I bring up the screen transfer window?

I had no problem with DBE though...wonderful tool

It looks like a great program, but for someone used to photoshop and a very organic way of processing, it's a tad confusing!!

Must be my age

Cheers

Rob

[harry page]

Hi

Welcome To the mad mad world of Pixinsight

All tools can be selected from the process explorer bar at the side

Use alt N as a shortcut for the preview

There is also the non complete user guide http://www.harrysastroshed.com/pixuser/pixuserhome.html

And on the official side when you open a tool there is a small icon that looks loke a turned down page , click this and you will see the instructions

Mind you not all the tools have been done to date:eek:

Good Luck

Harry

[RobH]

Thanks Harry.....I've been re running your tutorial and watching your mouse movements, and am making headway.....I reckon I'm going to enjoy using this program once I get used to the method of working

Cheers

Rob

[Space Bat]

It really is a daunting programme when first facing it, but the more you use it the more you get to understand it, even if like me will only scratch the surface of its capability.

I found the best way was to simply practice and practice - learning what a tweak here and there would do, save the image and then look at what the results did to the image.

Harry's guides do help, try working PI at the same time as watching Harry's video and follow each step in PI as you see harry do.

It was the fastest way I picked it up

To select preview on screen Alt+N this will bring the preview select cursor on screen where you can draw your preview box buy the way

[Tim]

I love PI now Rob, and use it for all initial stretching, colouring and masking, the only program I have that will work with a 32bit floating point file.

The deconvulve tool is gobsmackingly powerful. use the rollover tool tips for a general gist of whats going on, and then try to understand the lingo (not easy).

The PI forum is worth joining. When I am back on my own laptop i'll post the link to the various layer blend modes that match PS that you can do.

But I have to admit to finishing off in PS pretty much every time

[ollypenrice]

You will, I think, find DBE, Background Neutralization, SCNR and Colour Calibration instantly addictive. Probably everybody has their particular favourites.

I'd be really interested to see how you get on with Histogram Transformation. It gives me fantastic stretches of the L data but I have an awful job trying to get the colour to fill it. I've upped my RGB to L ratio big time as a result. Is this just me?

Olly

[Space Bat]

By the way Harry is always watching

[harry page]

Hi

Who Me

Harry

[RobH]

By the way Harry is always watching

I reckon he's got a big sign at home that flashes any time someone posts about pixinsight

[swag72]

I reckon he's got a big sign at home that flashes any time someone posts about pixinsight

Thank goodness he has!!!! He's helped me loads of times in my hours of need!!

[terrym2002uk]

I can thoroughly recommend Harry's basic video tutorials. I downloaded a trial of PI the other day, and managed to achieve some reasonable results in a single day.

PI does look very daunting, but after a day you'll get the hang of the basics. The one took a while for me to get was Alt-N (add a new preview) and the script utilities to merge multiple preview areas in to one, for use with other routines, like color calibration.

After that, I would also recommend you try a few of the online processing examples either from the PI or Harrys site, many have the supplied image sets so you can follow along exactly.

Extracting a luminance layer and using it as a mask after doing a histogram-transformation on it is just so cool!

Stick with it, I sure it will be worth the effort.

Now, how to muster up a couple of hundred euro!!

[terrym2002uk]

Oh, Another tip.

Many of the functions have a preview. The problem is you cant zoom the preview to see the finer details of your tweaks. I found the following very useful:

Draw a preview window on your main working image, and select the preview side tab. Then the function preview, like the wavelets will let you see at "zoomed" level so you can see what's really going on before applying it to your main image.

[Space Bat]

Harry....?

Has the new version I have just downloaded fixed the problem of stacking images?

I found using large stacks I would get through half the image alignment only for the nice Starbuck has stopped working

So I had to manually go through each image and decide a keeper or not and reduce the number I had to do star align. A real pain...*sigh*

I am pretty sure didn't have so much an issue on previous incarnates just when Starbuck came out...is this something you were aware of?

Chris

[harry page]

Hi

I have heard of problems with integration and large amounts of images , but not with registration .

Pixinsight does not officially support 32 bit operating system as it does not support very much memory , I would advise anybody to upgrade to avoid any memory problems

In the mean time what is stopping you from running registration twice , just pick a already registered as a reference

Harry

[Space Bat]

Thanks Harry

OK I may have meant integration Oooops

but it was never an issue with previous - only when Starbuck came out...

But on the plus side I have now got a new laptop which is 64 bit oodles of ram and hard drive and an i5 processor so am looking forward to much quicker operations...

Now only problem is I have some stacks on old laptop and it is dying a slow death and struggling to move stuff over as it is cooking itself to death as the display processor runs at a core temp on par with the sun....and shuts down

Thanks Harry for clearing things up....

Sorry OP just wanted to pick harry's brain as he was ever lurking

[NickK]

But on the plus side I have now got a new laptop which is 64 bit oodles of ram and hard drive and an i5 processor so am looking forward to much quicker operations...

Running a MacBook Pro i7 with 8GB with PixInsight64.. it's the only way to work with the 383L+'s 17MB images!

[Space Bat]

Running a MacBook Pro i7 with 8GB with PixInsight64.. it's the only way to work with the 383L+'s 17MB images!

Sadly laptop dying so close to xmas and other things to buy - could only stretch to the i5 or I would have got a better laptop

But on a plus or funny thing downloaded new 64 bit version - only to find next day a new one came out and so had to download again lol....

But my laptop was nearly 5 years old - so anything new is going to seem like a jet plane to my old Wright brothers

[MartinB]

I found some of the processing examples on the site very useful PixInsight — Processing Examples

This is a particularly good run through PixInsight — Deconvolution and HDRWaveletTransform: NGC 5189 from Gemini Observatory South

[Viv]

Can someone pleaseeee help ........

I've downloaded the trial version, see how it goes.

I can't get the preview boxes, unless added manually - but i think the ALT&N above will help.

Also, i'm using the CLS CCD filter, just can't seem to get any colour / detail out of the galaxy (did 40 subs - ok only 1 min each @1600 iso) of the Sunflower galaxy. Only ever seeing the core. it I try and expand the range, it's all going pink / purple.

Is this just inexperience, so am i doing something very wrong ???

PS - thanks Harry, very much relying on your videos, to get me though.