Welcome to the download area for the PixInsight Core application and the PixInsight Class Library (PCL) development framework. Here you'll find installation modules for the latest versions of PixInsight and the PCL on all supported platforms.

To use these versions of PixInsight on your computer you need a valid trial software license. Currently we offer a 30-Day Trial License at no cost, which allows you to try out fully-featured versions of our software with free online updates and email support. Read more about our trial licenses later on this document.

Download the Time-Limited PixInsight Core Application Distribution

Download the PCL Standard Distribution

Running the PixInsight Core Application with a 30-Day Trial License

After installing the Core Application or PCL package, you'll find the main PixInsight executable on the PCL/bin directory (PCL64/bin for 64-bit versions): it is the PixInsight.exe (Windows) or PixInsight (Linux) executable file.

The executable file launches a time-limited trial application. In order tu run this application on your computer, you need:

• A valid PixInsight trial software license. Currently we offer a 30-Day Trial License at no cost. Our trial licenses allow you to try out fully-featured versions of our software with free online updates and email support during the trial period.

• An active Internet connection each time you launch the core PixInsight application.

A trial license gives you the right to execute and use the PixInsight platform without limitations, during 30 days from the date of request. You can use PixInsight on both Windows and Linux with a single license. You are entitled to free email support and online updates during the trial period.

After the 30-day trial period, you must purchase a commercial license to continue using PixInsight. Commercial licenses only require an active Internet connection to perform an initial software activation procedure. Once activated, a commercial license does not require an active Internet connection.

Each time you launch the trial PixInsight executable, it runs a special HTTP client routine that connects to our web server to validate your license. If your system is protected by a firewall software, it might detect PixInsight's connection attempt as a potentially dangerous outbound connection. You must permit this connection to the Internet, or PixInsight won't run. You should be able to specify Internet access permissions through configuration settings in your firewall or anti-virus software.

You may rest assured that the PixInsight core application will never send any information or data from your computer over the Internet, other than the minimal data strictly necessary to validate your license on our server. This is the only action performed by the PixInsight core application through an Internet connection. During the entire license validation process, data are transmitted protected with an extremely strong encryption algorithm (AES-256), so that nobody listening the connection could be able to retrieve any information about you or your license.

The advantage of our trial licensing system is that you, developer and/or user, have the chance to work with a fully functional application that allows you to open, process and save images without limitations. You don't need to care about maximum file sizes or image dimensions, watermarks on saved images, or disabled features: what you try is exactly the same product that you can purchase later.

Linux Installation Notes

The Linux distribution packages are gzipped tar archives (tar.gz). To install a core application or PCL distribution, extract the full contents of the archive on any directory, preferably on one located under your home directory. Assuming that you have downloaded the tar.gz archive on your home directory, the required commands would look like these:

cd ~
mkdir PixInsight
cd PixInsight
tar -xzf ../PI-x11-x86-01.02.00.405-20080716-t.tar.gz

Now we have extracted all necessary files on a PixInsight directory under our home directory. To run the core PixInsight application, you must run the launcher program that is located on the bin installation directory. Following the above sequence:

./bin/PixInsight

or also:

~/PixInsight/bin/PixInsight

The PixInsight Core application cannot be executed directly on any platform; it is mandatory to run it by running the launcher program mentioned above.

Installation on SELinux Systems

On systems with SELinux (Security-Enforced Linux) active, you may need to authorize execution of shared libraries before attempting to run PixInsight. This can be achieved with the following command:

cd ~/PixInsight/bin
chcon -t texrel_shlib_t *.so

This has to be done only once, or each time that you delete the directory to install a new version of PixInsight.

Notes on Linux Color Management

As of releasing this version of PixInsight, there is no standardized color management system on Linux. We have therefore adopted some decisions that we think are the most logical compromise solutions. We have tried also to follow what is customarily accepted by most imaging and graphics applications in the Linux world. The first time PixInsight is executed on a Linux system, it looks for the following directory:

/usr/share/color/icc

If this directory exists, then PixInsight considers it as the global directory for ICC profile storage on the whole system. If the above directory doesn't exist, then PixInsight looks for:

~/color/icc

which is the local color directory under the user's home directory. Finally, if none of the above directories can be found, PixInsight uses its own fallback color directory, namely color/icc under its own installation path (for example, ~/PixInsight/color/icc). We have included a standard sRGB ICC profile on this directory to be used by default.

In any of the scenarios described above, PixInsight will try to find an ICC profile corresponding to the sRGB space, then it will assign that profile to the primary monitor. If PixInsight cannot find a valid sRGB profile on none of the locations mentioned (which is highly improbable if the application has been correctly installed), then the color management subsystem will not be available.

If your monitor is not well characterized by the sRGB color space (which is infrequent for low and medium-end LCD displays), you must specify the appropriate ICC profile. In this case, select Edit > Color Management Setup from the main menu, open the System Settings section on the ColorManagementSetup interface, and select the appropriate ICC profile for your monitor. It will be loaded and selected as the system's monitor profile the next time you launch the PixInsight Core application.

There are a number of resources on the Internet where you can obtain free ICC profiles. One of them is Adobe (Adobe RGB 1998, etc.). However, we haven't included any Adobe profiles in our distribution because we don't agree with the terms of the associated license. If you want to use Adobe profiles, you'll have to download and install them manually, by copying them to the corresponding directory (see the different options above).

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