So I've always been more of a lurker of forums than interacting, but I've enjoyed where the astrophotography journey has taken me and would love to know more about how to do more with my images and such. Going to do an info dump below on the method to my madness and interested if there are any ideas I could do different/better! Enjoy the image, I had a blast with it 
https://www.astrobin.com/yf00wz/
This is my latest image on the heart nebula I got over the weekend with my 10" newtonian. It is one of the first images where I decided to spend time and learn the tools of pixinsight.
Some of my mindset:
As far as integration goes I'm sure I could optimize it better. 15 minute subs is probably overkill, but I got my rig tuned to the point over the summer that I was curious about how a session of it looked fully stacked. Also spending my time imaging multiple nights on one targets to make the best of it vs my first year of imaging where I just wanted to see everything. It could be a placebo but I feel like I didn't have to do too much with the image during my process. I know there are optimal exposure time calculators but I haven't looked close at them to really know what I should be doing.
My workflow on this image looks like this:
Pixinsight:
Stack the 900" and 60" images separately with WBPP (default settings)
Dynamic Background Extraction
BlurX
SCNR (ive tried the photometric and spectrophotometric color calibration but it does weird stuff with my image compared to siril. have to play around more)
NoiseX (0.45 reduction and 0.2 preservation)
Star align
StarX the 900" image.
Siril:
GHS with even weighted arcsin stretch until nebula barely visible. Then GHS or inverse GHS until my channel levels are where I want them. (I'm more comfortable with the Siril GHS, need to sit down and watch videos on how to do similar in the pixinsight version)
Put the 60" star image back in pixinsigt and run through StarX, Turn the 900" starless image, 60" star image into a tiff for photoshop.
Photoshop:
Im still more comfortable with the tools here for final processing as well. Merging the stars onto the starless image, running it through camera raw filter, levels, stuff like that.
https://www.astrobin.com/yf00wz/
This is my latest image on the heart nebula I got over the weekend with my 10" newtonian. It is one of the first images where I decided to spend time and learn the tools of pixinsight.
Some of my mindset:
As far as integration goes I'm sure I could optimize it better. 15 minute subs is probably overkill, but I got my rig tuned to the point over the summer that I was curious about how a session of it looked fully stacked. Also spending my time imaging multiple nights on one targets to make the best of it vs my first year of imaging where I just wanted to see everything. It could be a placebo but I feel like I didn't have to do too much with the image during my process. I know there are optimal exposure time calculators but I haven't looked close at them to really know what I should be doing.
My workflow on this image looks like this:
Pixinsight:
Stack the 900" and 60" images separately with WBPP (default settings)
Dynamic Background Extraction
BlurX
SCNR (ive tried the photometric and spectrophotometric color calibration but it does weird stuff with my image compared to siril. have to play around more)
NoiseX (0.45 reduction and 0.2 preservation)
Star align
StarX the 900" image.
Siril:
GHS with even weighted arcsin stretch until nebula barely visible. Then GHS or inverse GHS until my channel levels are where I want them. (I'm more comfortable with the Siril GHS, need to sit down and watch videos on how to do similar in the pixinsight version)
Put the 60" star image back in pixinsigt and run through StarX, Turn the 900" starless image, 60" star image into a tiff for photoshop.
Photoshop:
Im still more comfortable with the tools here for final processing as well. Merging the stars onto the starless image, running it through camera raw filter, levels, stuff like that.
