PixInsight question [workflow linking]

[AstroPhil]

Hello all,

I've been trying out PiXInsight for processing and - despite the long learning process (hooray for the amazing tutorials on Light Vortex Astronomy!) - I am now making progress. Here's my question: is there any way to link the separate processes (see screenshot) so that one can simply set the entire workflow processing, in this case top to bottom? Also, if any of those processes are closed (as opposed to minimized) they seem to lose all their settings. Can that be right? Surely the whole point of having them on a desktop is to allow the sequence, and all their settings, to be saved. I tried the "save project" feature but that doesn't help. So I seem to be stuck with leaving the processes minimized and cross fingers I don't inadvertently close one by accident.

Am I missing something really silly here? Surely a basic function of this sort of desktop/graphical GUI is to allow settings to be saved, and link one process to another (where it's suitable to do so of course). In my time I've used various data processing packages (seismic data, X-Ray CT) and they all have these sort of features.

Having said that, the images are excellent: the examples below are just 60 minutes of data (2 min subs) using an uncooled Ultrastar + FC100DL.

Any advice most welcome!

Cheers, Phil

[Barry-Wilson]

Hi Phil

I'm not really sure I understand what you are meaning when you say "link the separate processes".

You can save your process icons as 'favourites': Process/Process Icons/Save Seelected Process Icons.  This will enable you to open a set of processes (or one process or any number of processes) each set with the settings they had when saved.

Is that what you mean?

There are pros/cons with this approach though - you save some time setting values in your processes, however you also may unwittingly begin to 'rely' on the processes and their settings in your saved favourites as though they were 'default'.

The Warren Keller book 'Inside PixInsight' is a worthwhile purchase if you decide that PixInsight is for you.

HTH

[wimvb]

If you open the process history of an image, you can drag it as a process container onto the workspace. Just drag the small triangle from the process history onto the workspace. This will retain the settings as they were applied to the image. You can save the process container.

If you have multiple processes iconised on the workspace, you can select them all and save them as process icons. This will also save the settings.

You can apply an entire process container to an image.

[AstroPhil]

Hi both, many thanks for the advice, very much appreciated.

@Barry-Wilson Yes, that's kind-of what I meant. I was thinking more of a 'script' whereby you can drag an arrow from one process to another. Once PI finished an initial process, it'd automatically execute the next linked process. Anything interactive wouldn't work (and nor would I wish to!) but it'd help me try out different ideas (settings) in the middle of a flow (say) and see what improved in the final image. Sort of like making a bespoke "batch pre-process". I'm happy to learn there is away to save the process settings though; I'll try that for sure, as well and acquire the reference book.

@wimvb Process container, awesome, this will be a huge help, thanks! Perhaps this is more along the lines of the workflow I was describing (I only used that terminology as it was familiar to me from other data processing software!). I'll have a play.

Lots to try. I suspect I am very much buried in the learning curve here - but on the whole I like PI a lot, it comes across slightly better than DSS - perhaps just the fact that the detailed underpinning transformations are all laid bare and ripe for tweaking!

Cheers.

[Skipper Billy]

It's pretty rare that two sets of data need exactly the same processing - even two sets of data taken with the same equipment of the same subject usually require different processing techniques. 

[wimvb]

2 hours ago, Skipper Billy said:

It's pretty rare that two sets of data need exactly the same processing - even two sets of data taken with the same equipment of the same subject usually require different processing techniques. 

Never, imo. You always need to tweak settings to suit each image. But having a processcontainer helps if you want to redo a process that is "a few steps back" in the flow. In such a case I drag the process history to the workspace, back up to the redo, and afterwards apply the old processes again. This is much faster than redoing everything. But as far as I know, a process container doesn't apply masks for individual processes, even if they are in the list.

[kirkster501]

I don't think there is any limit to what you can do.  You can create process containers and the Pixinsight platform individual processes such as Image Integration etc are accessible via their API to pass parameters back to some calling application held in its own container.  So the calling application could be called "AstroPhil" and you would then pass back and forth the various parameters to the Pixinsight processes to do what you want the "Astrophil" process to do.  You can knock something together in Javascript or C+ that passes your image parameters to each process process by process from your own container application.   This is explained in the Pixnsight documentation.  The Batch Preprocessing script does something similar (as do all the scripts). BPP is a "script" though, it does not get down to machine level.

The question comes back to, as others have said, why would you in the context you set out on your top post??? Every picture is so unique that it is impossible to create a one-size-fits-all template in the manner you envisage.