Astro Pixel Processor vs Pixinsight ?

[gazza]

Hi,

I wonder if those who have knowledge and experience of both these programs, could point me in the direction of which to purchase?

I have just had a wonderful first light with my new Mesu 200, and as I can now do some relatively serious imaging, am looking at purchasing some new software for processing. I cannot afford to buy both, so must make a choice here. I currently own Astroart 6 and Photoshop CS6. I quite like Astoart, and found it fine for OSC omages, but I find dealing with light pollution difficult and a bit hit and miss. I also intend using my scope for mosaics, which APP seems to handle brilliantly.

Several years ago I had a trial version of Pixinsight but couldn't make head nor tail of it. I recently bought Kellers book, and requested a new trial from the Pixinsight team, but they didn't bother to reply to my email :-( so I can't really try it out.

I'm interested in obtaining decent results without aiming for an APOD... I'm not someone who will spend 8 hours processing an image. I might spend an hour or two....

I have watched several of the APP videos and it looks really good, but I would really value the opinion of people who really know processing ! Does APP plus Photoshop + really good processing? or should I go for Pixinsight + Photoshop?

cheers

Gary

[swag72]

I can't offer too much insight on PI and so certainly can't offer an APP / PI comparison.

What I will say about APP is that it's pre processing is straightforward and effective. While perhaps not 'better' than my pre processing with maxim, it's as good. For me, THE best bit of APP so far has been the mosaic integration. I had a 6 pane mosaic that I wanted to check with 1 sub in each pane that it all fitted together. I could not get it to stitch in PI, so a friend did it for me and talked me through the process..... it took over an hour and was more complicated than I care to remember.... the results were OK. 

I tried the same with APP - In maybe 10 minutes I had a stitched mosaic that in terms of quality and ease knocked PI into a tin hat. For me, APP is worth it for that alone. 

The Light Pollution Correction tool on APP is also very good..... It has once again given me far better results than PI's DBE routine. 

Up to the linear stage I think that APP is very good..... I haven't yet found any kind of ease in actually processing an image. It relies on a DDP model (as does Maxim and CCDStack) for getting your image to a non linear and partly processed stage...... I've never understood DDP methods and so can not comment on that part. I did all I needed in APP and then moved across to Photoshop for actual processing.

The interface is different to anything I've used before, but it seems fairly straightforward when you've used it a couple of times. Much of the stuff can be done in default mode and doesn't involve strange mathematical genius  The developer is really hands on and will always offer help and great advice. 

Is it a product I would recommend? Yes. Can it do all that PI can do? I'd say no. But when used in conjunction with Photoshop I find that it more than meets my needs. Will I carry on using APP? For sure

Hope that helps, even if it doesn't directly answer your question!!!

[tony210]

Hi -very interested in APP and have PI- so far it would seem that APP offers a quick way to calibrate and integrate with flats darks etc which in itself would attract me as PI routines are quite lengthy the way I am doing them - also if  LP correction tool is better than DBE its doing very well - in Pixinsight you have a wealth of linear and non linear processing tools but I guess if APP can do a lot of this quickly it will be very attractive - just for the speed of calibration and stacking I am interested -Tony

[gazza]

3 hours ago, swag72 said:

I can't offer too much insight on PI and so certainly can't offer an APP / PI comparison.

What I will say about APP is that it's pre processing is straightforward and effective. While perhaps not 'better' than my pre processing with maxim, it's as good. For me, THE best bit of APP so far has been the mosaic integration. I had a 6 pane mosaic that I wanted to check with 1 sub in each pane that it all fitted together. I could not get it to stitch in PI, so a friend did it for me and talked me through the process..... it took over an hour and was more complicated than I care to remember.... the results were OK. 

I tried the same with APP - In maybe 10 minutes I had a stitched mosaic that in terms of quality and ease knocked PI into a tin hat. For me, APP is worth it for that alone. 

The Light Pollution Correction tool on APP is also very good..... It has once again given me far better results than PI's DBE routine. 

Up to the linear stage I think that APP is very good..... I haven't yet found any kind of ease in actually processing an image. It relies on a DDP model (as does Maxim and CCDStack) for getting your image to a non linear and partly processed stage...... I've never understood DDP methods and so can not comment on that part. I did all I needed in APP and then moved across to Photoshop for actual processing.

The interface is different to anything I've used before, but it seems fairly straightforward when you've used it a couple of times. Much of the stuff can be done in default mode and doesn't involve strange mathematical genius  The developer is really hands on and will always offer help and great advice. 

Is it a product I would recommend? Yes. Can it do all that PI can do? I'd say no. But when used in conjunction with Photoshop I find that it more than meets my needs. Will I carry on using APP? For sure

Hope that helps, even if it doesn't directly answer your question!!!

Thanks Sara,

If you can process images to achieve results that satisfy you with APP and Photoshop, that's good enough for me as a recommendation. Your images are one of my inspirations....

cheers

Gary

[gazza]

1 hour ago, tony210 said:

Hi -very interested in APP and have PI- so far it would seem that APP offers a quick way to calibrate and integrate with flats darks etc which in itself would attract me as PI routines are quite lengthy the way I am doing them - also if  LP correction tool is better than DBE its doing very well - in Pixinsight you have a wealth of linear and non linear processing tools but I guess if APP can do a lot of this quickly it will be very attractive - just for the speed of calibration and stacking I am interested -Tony

Hi,

I tried doing a stack tonight, and it worked beautifully. Really easy to do as well. I'll spend some more time with the trial version, but will probably emd up buying it.

cheers

Gary

[alexbb]

4 minutes ago, gazza said:

Hi,

I tried doing a stack tonight, and it worked beautifully. Really easy to do as well. I'll spend some more time with the trial version, but will probably emd up buying it.

cheers

Gary

Spend some time trying all the things with the trial version. I tried it and it failed every time I wanted to do a mosaic. Either with a null pointer exception, either with an index out of bounds exception, depending if I loaded all the files and how I chose the reference frame. If it's still going to be an option to evaluate it later, I will give it another try, if I can't reevaluate it later because my trial expired, then it's not for me. I really waited for this software as it promised some nice stuff, but it didn't play nice for me.

[sloz1664]

I downloaded the APP trial version yesterday and having played with it for a few hours I found the interface, processes and ease of use very good indeed. The bad pixel map is a work of genius. I purchased the "Owner" version today  

Steve

[sloz1664]

Hi Gary,

In answer to your question. It depends how deep you want to process your images. I find APP is excellent at pre-processing images and for that reason I purchased APP. Pixinsight is a powerful beast, with a lot of resources, but can takes an age to process an image from scratch. Have a look at the Light Vortex tutorials, which show the amount of detail and work to fully process images in Pixinsight. 

 

http://www.lightvortexastronomy.com/tutorials.html

 

Steve