Pixinsight... Grrrr

[pook]

Anyone else find this program just utterly over-complex and unintuitive to the point of screaming in frustration or is it just me? I've been working with it for hours now, and reading tutorials on their website, and I've actually achieved nothing.

I was up and running in DSS within 10 minutes. Why is Pixinsight so highly regarded? Should I soldier on, or does it do nothing that DSS and some skill in Photoshop can't do?

[syd_malicious]

Yes and no.

I tried the trial a couple of times and nearly gave up as I found it too complex.

The ONLY thing that got me through were "Harry's videos"; they are fantastic and allowed me to achieve something. After these I ended up buying Pixinsight and now am able to achieve so much better pictures.

Having said that I am still only scratching the surface as the development team have a no apologies approach to revelling in as much complexity and obfuscation as possible. I really wish they took a more simplistic approach to the labelling of parameters and processes.

My workflow is now

Maxim - calibration and stacking (Pixinsight is just ridiculously longwinded)

Pixinsight - most processing

Photoshop - final touch ups

Basically it is a great tool but only part of my list of tools. Stick with it and use Harry's videos - the time you spend is very worthwhile.

Paul

[MikeP]

I'm just the opposite - I find Photoshop over-complex and unintuitive, whereas I find Pixinsight consistent and logical. OK, there are a lot of parameters and I freely admit I only know what a handful do but the defaults get you going.

As Paul suggests, use Harry's site - both the videos and his Pixinsight User Guide. I'm rubbish at imaging so most of my experiments have been with poor quality data but I'm getting far better results than I ever did with Photoshop.

Maxim - guiding and capture (or at least trying to)

Pixinsight - calibration, stacking and processing

Mike