Just switched to Pixinsight, Probably the biggest improvement in Astrophotography I've had. here are some comparisons - Forums

Topic starter

Oct 25, 2023

This is not really a question or anything, but more a realization that I felt like sharing.

I started Astrophotography about 4 years ago and did it on and off. I have now committed much more time to it. I got a proper setup but never got a photo, which I was really happy with. I was very set on using Photoshop and siril to edit my photos since I didn't want to spend more money on editing software since I already had Photoshop etc.
Anyway, I just downloaded the test version of pixinsight with the test versions of Star- noise and blur xTerminator and holy sh*t that made a difference.
I always felt like I was just polishing a turd with the data I had collected when editing with siril and Photoshop. Now with pixinsight it finally feels like my images are good enough to be happy with them. Of course, my editing skills in Pixinsight have to still improve, but even the first tries made such a huge difference.

Here is the Orion Nebula with the exact same stacked file edited with siril and Photoshop, and one with pixinsight and Photoshop.

And yes this is not my final edit, it looks to artifical and it does still need some changing. but the difference is extreme.

Here is the California Nebula:

To everyone starting out...do consider switching to pixinsight. it really makes a difference.

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Alan Hancox

Oct 25, 2023

Its night and day. I`d never go back to anything else. PixInsight rules!!! Great images btw

Danny Lee

Oct 25, 2023 · Edited: Oct 25, 2023

Great improvements, well done.

Yes PixInsight was a huge improvement for me too when I began using it, even being able to apply a one click STF automatic stretch blew my mind.

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Quinn Groessl

IOTD Staff

Oct 25, 2023

I tried gimp and photoshop without really ever using either before, and they were hard to learn and didn't leave me with results I liked. Pixinsight was of course a bit hard to learn, but one video made it click for me. Then I was pretty happy with my results and ever since it's just been getting better.

https://youtu.be/V-9MIy0eB6k?si=AwwwmIuOcwLODGgI

That's the video. In the description they have a step by step pdf guide to follow along with. To be honest at this point I pretty much do things completely different now, but this was really my starting point in Pixinsight. I guess the main ones is steps 1-5 I condense down to ABE. I use SPCC for steps 9-10. Then the other thing is I use BlurX, StarX, and NoiseX, and generally process my stars separately so I don't need to reduce them at the end. Either way, this was a great starting point for me in Pixinsight, it worked best on galaxy images, but was easy to modify a bit to do different nebulae too.

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Alan Hancox

Oct 25, 2023

If you want some great beginner tutorials i`d recommend Visible Dark, hes a great guy very helpful….

Markus A. R. Langlotz

Oct 26, 2023

The same for me.
Pixinsight brought my results to a totally new level.

CS

Markus

Etienne

Oct 26, 2023

Pretty much the same journey for me. I've quickly learned how much processing makes a difference and investing in pixinsight + the RCAstro tools is the best decision I've made. Compared to the cost of better equipment, the return on investment with these softwares is insane.

Now, pixinsight is a BEAST, the learning curve is steep and long. And I've just started that journey. I have made lots of progress since I started using it (example with the original & final images for my current shot of M31). There are tons of amazing tutorials, step by steps, tips on youtube and forums (ie. Cloudy Nights), and also some amazing processes and scripts to get. FYI you absolutely need to check the brilliant work of Mike Cranfield: https://cosmicphotons.com/scripts/.

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TurtleCat

Oct 28, 2023

No doubt that PixInsight is the only tool that lets you maximize what you have with care and attention. I recommend Adam Block's fundamentals course. It costs some money but the way he explains the tools is very good. Even though there are some newer approaches and tools even seeing some of the older items can be helpful as it gives you some foundational knowledge and sometimes they work when other items won't work.

You can get a sample of his approach by following his YouTube videos. I've watched and read others out there and they can be very helpful but they tend, to me, to be more about recipes to re-create something and not teaching you the how/why you do things so you can make the choices you need on your images.

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Die Launische Diva

Oct 29, 2023

Horst Ziegler:
I just did the following comparisation of NGC281 Stacking standalone on my DELL Latitude E6500:

Stack of 44 Lights, 20 Bias, 20 Darks and 20 Flats with PixInsight. Runtime = 2 hrs 49 minutes
Only Calibration, Debayer, Registration and Integration, no further development, result stacked as Fits, opened with Fitswork and saved as JPEG. Strange colors

Stack of same 44 Lights, 20 Bias, 20 Darks and 20 Flats with MaxIm DL. Runtime = 23 minutes
Only Calibration, Debayer, Registration and Integration, no further development, result stacked as Fits, opened with Fitswork and saved as JPEG

Full solution PI

After additional Photometric Color Calibration Colors with PI are correct:

Fullsolution PI with Color Calibration

With MaximDL the colors are correct without further action

Full solution MaximDL

PI the only Tool? Comments welcome
Horst

You are comparing two different preprocessing and integration pipelines. PI does not attempt to automatically color balance by default. Also, you have chosen to perform Local Normalization, a computationally demanding step which its purpose is to simplify gradients. Do an aggressive stretch to both results and notice how simpler the gradients are in the PI result. This can be testified even by stretching the jpegs you have provided.

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andrea tasselli

Frequent contributor

Oct 29, 2023

WBPP is an excruciatingly slow way of doing things. If you were to do it in a time-optimizing way (clue: do not use WBPP) it would be much much faster.