Idiots guide to Pixinsight tutorial

[GrampyG]

Hi, hope this is the right place to ask but I'm just trying out Pixinsight having been used to Photoshop.

So anyone recommend a GOOD, SIMPLISTIC tutorial for Pixinsight?

Thank you

G

[scotty38]

I am not sure if these fit the simplistic requirement but they are very good and highly recommended so I'd check out Adam Block's videos particularly his massive WBPP series as that will get you from capture to master lights ready for processing.

 

He also has some on setting up the interface etc etc but I am not sure offhand if they are part of his (paid for) fasttrack series

Edited February 20, 2022 by scotty38

[Budgie1]

I used the 12 part video tutorials from Mitch.

My advice would be to start with the post-processing side of Pixinsight and get to know that first. You can leave the stacking to the likes of DSS and go back to the Weighted Batch Processing later.

[Ouroboros]

A second recommendation for Mitch from me too. His videos are a tad idiosyncratic, but they get you going which is the main thing. I found his initial video on the Pixinsight interface very helpful at the start of my PI journey. I also agree with the recommendation to tackle post processing first and come back to preprocessing later.  I found the book Inside Pixinsight 2nd Ed. By Warren Keller useful too. In fact I now pretty much follow his book as a workflow now. There are other, more recent books too now. Although video tutorials are useful as an initial guide, I find a physical reference book by my side more convenient in the long term. 

[gilesco]

2 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

There are other, more recent books too now.

Do you have links for the other books? Can only find Warren Keller's on Amazon.

Thinking about pressing the button for PixInsight, but as have not been able to image since early December I am not in any hurry as yet.

[Ouroboros]

@gilesco

A lot of people appear to favour Mastering Pixinsight by Rogelio Bernal Andrea. It’s available in electronic form and also as hard copy I believe. I have the electronic copy. Frankly I was not so impressed. But different approaches suit different people. I also don’t find an electronic copy as useable as a book. 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Ouroboros

[gilesco]

31 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

@gilesco

A lot of people appear to favour Mastering Pixinsight by Rogelio Bernal Andrea. It’s available in electronic form and also as hard copy I believe. I have the electronic copy. Frankly I was not so impressed. But different approaches suit different people. I also don’t find an electronic copy as useable as a book. 

Yes, I saw reference to that - from the looks of it it is only available from its own website, and only digital copies are currently available. They don't appear to be planning reprinting anytime soon and I very much avoid eBooks.

[Ouroboros]

50 minutes ago, gilesco said:

Yes, I saw reference to that - from the looks of it it is only available from its own website, and only digital copies are currently available. They don't appear to be planning reprinting anytime soon and I very much avoid eBooks.

OK. Thanks for finding that out. 

[Budgie1]

2 hours ago, gilesco said:

Thinking about pressing the button for PixInsight, but as have not been able to image since early December I am not in any hurry as yet.

I got the 45 day trail version of PI first and started by reprocessing older images I previously processed with PhotoShop.

This way I could see the difference PI made to the quality of the final image and to make sure I liked the software, before forking out the full price for it.

Don't be put off by the complexity of it, once you get used to the UI and get a basic workflow sorted then it makes more sense. Also make use of the ability to save your favourite/most used Process Icons down the right hand side of the screen. Then you can simply reload them on start-up.

[gilesco]

9 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

I got the 45 day trail version of PI first and started by reprocessing older images

Yes, I intend to start off with the trial. I already have "The Deep Sky Imaging Primer" by Bracken, which has a few chapters which flip between PixInsight and Photoshop (I don't have Photoshop) for some workflow, so will review that at some point. While I prefer printed books, they often get out of date to new developments in the software.

I will probably have to devote some serious time and planning, I admit to having been one of those who just tries to dabble around randomly trying to pull detail and remove noise from images, l and not using any of the serious tools that PixInsight and other tools offer. I haven't worked much with Masks and Layers, but recognise it is something that I'm going to have to get used to doing.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

I too can highly recommend Adam Blocks tutorials. However, they are not free and so probably an unnecessary experience if you just have the trial period and may not stick with PI long term.

I think one question I have is if you are used to PS is it just the fact you have an never-ending ongoing cost to remain with PS or are you hoping for better images with PI, whether thats in conjunction with using PS or instead of PS ?

PI is very different to PS in the way it works and the way you use it and I think people who are well used to PS often find PI very difficult and struggle to get into the mindset of how to use it because they are so used to PS.
For me it was the other way round I chose to use PI pretty early on after processing my early images with the easier but more restrictive programs such as Nebulosity and whilst I would not say it was easy to get to grips with I did manage it without too much pain (although mastering it is far more tricky and I am still not there yet), however, I have since tried to use PS and I find I struggle somewhat with that.
A few people do mange both PI and PS really well and then use both for various tasks to process their images.

 So really just a warning really, that if you are very conversant with PhotoShop you might just struggle to get going with PI, and believe me that 45 days (or whatever it is you get for the trial now) goes really quickly, I think I emailed them after my trial had ended to say I was still evaluating it and they gave me a 2nd trial period.

Also using past data you have already processed and know to be good data and process it again with PI is a great idea and as you are familiar with the data and the image you first produced will help speed things up.

Steve 

[scotty38]

35 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

I too can highly recommend Adam Blocks tutorials. However, they are not free and so probably an unnecessary experience if you just have the trial period and may not stick with PI long term.

 

Worth pointing out that a lot are free especially the extremely well done WBPP series

Edited February 21, 2022 by scotty38

[teoria_del_big_bang]

23 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

Worth pointing out that a lot are free especially the extremely well done WBPP series

Ah okay I was not aware there were some free ones.

Steve

[Gasman]

Slightly off topic but does anyone use PI for anything other than astro?. I have a license for PI but never really got into it when I did astro but now I mainly do microscopy and wondered if it could be useful with 'normal' short exposures jpegs and Raws?. Also had a thought about now using darks and flats for microscope shots although with short exposures noise is not really an issue.

Thanks

Steve

[teoria_del_big_bang]

16 minutes ago, Gasman said:

Slightly off topic but does anyone use PI for anything other than astro?. I have a license for PI but never really got into it when I did astro but now I mainly do microscopy and wondered if it could be useful with 'normal' short exposures jpegs and Raws?. Also had a thought about now using darks and flats for microscope shots although with short exposures noise is not really an issue.

Thanks

Steve

I don't personally, but then do not really do much with photos other than astro stuff.
All the program does in the end is mess about with intensities of individual pixels and the program has no idea what sort of image it is working with so yes it can be used for any sort of images and I guess the standard stuff such as the Histogram transformation, colour saturation and some of the noise removal stuff will work fine but things such as stacking frames requires stars so I do not think would work.
Also many of the processes are dedicated to astro needs so probably will either not work at all, or will not really be of any use.
So yes it will have some use (I guess) but you would be far better off with PS or other similar cheaper software such as affinity photo and for the cost of affinity photo would not bother trying to use PI on other images than astro stuff as I think it would be just too hard to get it to do what you require compared to the many other photo imaging software that are largely designed to cope with photos other than astro images.

Steve

Steve  

Edited February 21, 2022 by teoria_del_big_bang

[sloz1664]

No one has mentioned Harry Page's Pixinsight videos, they may be a few years old now, but still a good insight into Pixinsight and he's an active member of SGL.

Steve

[Gasman]

3 hours ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

I don't personally, but then do not really do much with photos other than astro stuff.
All the program does in the end is mess about with intensities of individual pixels and the program has no idea what sort of image it is working with so yes it can be used for any sort of images and I guess the standard stuff such as the Histogram transformation, colour saturation and some of the noise removal stuff will work fine but things such as stacking frames requires stars so I do not think would work.
Also many of the processes are dedicated to astro needs so probably will either not work at all, or will not really be of any use.
So yes it will have some use (I guess) but you would be far better off with PS or other similar cheaper software such as affinity photo and for the cost of affinity photo would not bother trying to use PI on other images than astro stuff as I think it would be just too hard to get it to do what you require compared to the many other photo imaging software that are largely designed to cope with photos other than astro images.

Steve

Steve  

Thanks for that Steve, yes I did wonder if PI had anything non-astro to add to the party!. I do have Affinity Photo among others which as you say would be better for everyday stuff than PI.

Thanks again

Steve

[Viktiste]

On 20/02/2022 at 17:50, Budgie1 said:

I used the 12 part video tutorials from Mitch.

My advice would be to start with the post-processing side of Pixinsight and get to know that first. You can leave the stacking to the likes of DSS and go back to the Weighted Batch Processing later.

I too recommend to start with the tutorials from Mitch.

[GrampyG]

Thank you all for your replies and help. Sorry for the delay in replying but I've been away.

Watched some tutorials and got the digital copy of 'mastering PI'; I will have to continue working at it.

My problem is that I am very used to Photoshop and I am sure that this makes it more difficult especially if one is getting past ones 'sell-by date' in age. Never mind, we shall overcome🤨!

Thank you all once again

G

[AstroPhil]

There's definitely a steep learning curve to PI - I almost have to "re-learn it" each time, particulary with the different sequences of processes. I've often wondered why they cannot come up with a graphical script that can be 'saved' and then simply add/change input files and/or parameters (not talking about the batch sequence process though). The re-run the whole thing in sequence rather than forgetting ones place! When I worked in the Oil/Gas inductry a long time ago there was a software called ProMAX that did this....

[scotty38]

12 minutes ago, AstroPhil said:

There's definitely a steep learning curve to PI - I almost have to "re-learn it" each time, particulary with the different sequences of processes. I've often wondered why they cannot come up with a graphical script that can be 'saved' and then simply add/change input files and/or parameters (not talking about the batch sequence process though). The re-run the whole thing in sequence rather than forgetting ones place! When I worked in the Oil/Gas inductry a long time ago there was a software called ProMAX that did this....

Process Container?

[Budgie1]

I've saved the icons of the processes I use most in workflow order down the right hand side of the screen.

Then I can load the saved icons at start up and my basic workflow is there in front of me.

[scotty38]

4 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

I've saved the icons of the processes I use most in workflow order down the right hand side of the screen.

Then I can load the saved icons at start up and my basic workflow is there in front of me.

That's correct but the process container automates the application of the processes contained within and that in itself can be applied to an image container containing, well, images....

[grantboxer]

There is also a series of free youtube videos on PixInsight by Amy Astro. Covers some basic stuff like making calibration frames and using drizzle integration.

[AstroPhil]

On 27/02/2022 at 21:58, scotty38 said:

That's correct but the process container automates the application of the processes contained within and that in itself can be applied to an image container containing, well, images....

I've not heard of this! I'll give it a go, sounds interesting. Cheers for the tip!