First Effort PixInsight

[mackiedlm]

I decided I needed to give PixInsght a try out so got the 45 day trial. I had been avoiding it because of cost/perceived difficulty.

This is my very first effort with it and it was done very much following online tutorials.

It is certainly a a steep learning curve but perhaps not as steep as i expected. The image is still not the best but I do think it is an improvement on my previous effort in APP/PS 9I'll post that below. This was captured with a L-enhance filter, Calibrated, stacked, Ha and Oiii extracted in APP but everything else in PI but processed just as LRGB. I will need to look into how to do HOO in PI but for the moment its baby steps.

75 X 240s (half at ISO800, half at ISO1600)

EOS700Da

NEQ6

PHD2/APT

Previous best effort in APP and Photoshop

As always I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions for improvement.

[groberts]

I'm battling up the said PI learning curve but I'm motivated by your result, a clear improvement on the earlier version.  Few more months (years!) and I might get there too! 

Well done.

Graham

Edited August 26, 2020 by groberts

[mackiedlm]

5 minutes ago, groberts said:

I'm battling up the said PI learning curve but I'm motivated by your result, a clear improvement on the earlier version.  Few more months (years!) and I might get there too! 

As a matter of interest is that entirely PI, pre- and post-processing?

Well done.

Graham

Thanks for that.

No, its calibrated and stacked in APP so its coming from the exact same stack as the earlier version. I have done a few stacks and calibrations in PI but did not really see much difference in the stack so decided to do post on this one from the APP stack, partly out of laziness partly to allow me to assess the PI Post processing on its own.

[groberts]

As a matter of interest do you find APP easier than PI for pre-processing?  I find PI particulary complex with this phase and I'm thinking of of perhaps moving to APP and then PI for post processing.

Graham 

[mackiedlm]

2 minutes ago, groberts said:

As a matter of interest do you find APP easier than PI for pre-processing?  I find PI particulary complex with this phase and I'm thinking of of perhaps moving to APP and then PI for post processing.

Graham 

As a matter of fact I do find APP easier for pre processing. You load up everything in the right places and hit go and it does it all. In PI (at least the way I've learned so far) its very manual. You need to remember to calibrate some of the calibration frames, you need to manually save the masters etc. Now none of that is difficult and not a show stopper (unless you forget something)but APP manages it all for you. And if the final stack looks much the same then ......

BTW I love APP overall - gradient removal is great, color calibration works well, RGB combine is really good. I just wanted to get more control over noise reduction  deconvolution etc.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Having used PI for over a year now, and whilst there is still a lot of processes I have not even touched on yet ,I feel I am well over the steepest part of the curve. For myself at least I have found that once you understand the way it works it really does seem a better way of working and I have really come to like it (a lot). But that might just be me 🙂 

That new image really is a great image and well worth having another go with that data.

Steve

[teoria_del_big_bang]

There is the script for pre-processing the data "Weighted Batch Preprocessing" that can make things a bit more automated and is capable of automatically recognising lights, flats, darks, bias etc. 

But to be honest it is not something I have used too much as yet but have vowed to try it with my next batch of data so cannot comment how good it is compared to other automated software.

Steve

[MarkAR]

Nice result for the PI version.

I just use the Batch Preprocessing, chuck everything in and press go. The defaults seem to work very well for me so far.