image Processing Using PixInsight

I have been 'playing' with PixInsight for the best part of a year now and have used in in tandem with Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop.

PixInsight has a number of advantages for Astro Photos as all of its function work with high bit depth images throughout. This may seem unnecessary but carrying out heavy processing may result in rounding errors that manifest themselves as halos or shading. Some of its tools such as the Histogram Tool are very precise compared with Photoshop which is a blunt instrument by comparison.

The problem with PixInsight is that there is no instruction book! It is modular by nature and constantly evolving. It was only with the release of some video tutorials of some of its functions that I have managed to develop something of a workflow and I have made a series of screen captures to show hopefully just how powerful it can be.

http://www.pbase.com …insight_process​ing_of_m45

Note that I am no PixInsight expert but what I have learned has made me persevere with it.

A 30 day trial is available on the Pixinsight website at

http://pixinsight.com/

along with some most excellent video tutorials by Harry Page.

Hi Chris,

I recently purchased pixinsight. It has some powerful tools, but the learning curve is steep for me. I looked at your tutorial about processing m45. Can you please clarify some steps for me?

In the pixelmath step, how did you get a seperate image from background?

In the color calibration step, how did you get the aggregated parts into a separate image? Is it as simple as copy and paste?

I would appreciate your help.

Thanks, Doug

I answered my own questions with these tutorials:

http://www.harrysastro​shed.com/pixinsighthom​enewbie.html

If you're new to PixInsight, these videos are worth watching and will get you off to a good start.

-Doug