Hi Rodd,
As you call me here, let me give you my personal vision on this subject. Please don't take the following as an attack, but only as the truth about my idea of what is astrophotography, which is also the underlying philosophy behind the PixInsight project. I am not trying to convince you or anyone else; this is only my personal opinion.
You don't really need reasons to stay here. What you really need is to ask yourself why you are doing astrophotography, or in other words, what do you think is astrophotography and what can it give to you personally.
PixInsight has not been conceived and designed, and is not being developed, as a tool to paint images. If you want to paint, PixInsight is probably one of the worst tools you may find for that task. Photoshop and similar applications are much better for that. Photoshop will always win to help you build absolutely stunning and wonderful pictures, simply because nothing can compete with arbitrary manipulations to give you exactly what you want to achieve, when and where you want to achieve it.
An accomplished imager just posted an image of Markarians Chain taken with an FSQ 106--a 4" refractor--wide field. BUT, he inserted long focal length data captured with a bigger scope into the galaxies.
There are different ways to do this, and in some cases it could be more or less justifiable, depending on the context where the image is going to be used and how it will be presented. But this is painting, and the resulting picture as a whole is not a fair representation of the acquired data. It has been arbitrarily manipulated without a global criterion based on physical properties of the represented objects. It has been painted this way just to make it look 'nice' without any documentary criteria.
Yes, this can be done in PixInsight, and some users have described procedures that should work well. However, nothing in PixInsight can compete with Photoshop to achieve this. A couple layers, a few brushes, a put this here and move that there, et voilà, job done.
PixInsight is a tool to help you develop your astrophotography through the knowledge of image processing. Astrophotography, with all the technical and artistic challenges involved, is a path of personal growth. The why and the how are much more important than the final product.
Please don't take this as an attack...I would not believe it if I didn't read it with my own eyes. How can using 2 scopes to capture data of an astronomical target be in the remotest sense "painting" ? That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard out of the PI camp. really. Its beyond the pale in truth. And it is insulting as well. If using 2 scopes of different focal lengths is painting, why then is not using different filters? or narrowband filters combined with RGB data? Combining data from 2 different focal lengths is no different than using noise control to remove noise--or a sharpening tool to sharpen structures. in fact--it is LESS painting, because you are not manipulating anything. You are taking data in its raw form and combining it with other data in its raw form--the data represents the same structure--truthfully. I find it disturbing that when a tool or technique is brought to the attention of the PI team because people that process images think it is good--but PI doesn't have it--then the answer is it is not scientific, or its painting, or somehow it is not being truthful with the data. It is a sad thing, but I am sorry I committed to PI......I now understand what was told to me in the beginning when I knew nothing about processing. This is personified in the fact that I argued with Vicent at a seminar regarding using G2 star for color calibration instead of a relative standard, which was the only way to do it in PI at the time. He thought my opinion was laughable--refused to discuss it further. Ruined the seminar for me. Low and behold--a tool for that very approach came out. Now, I did not have a real problem with the color calibration, but using a relative approach certainly flew in the face of the ...pardon the French..precocious attitude of the PI camp that only scientifically valid techniques are appropriate for them. Well, I tell you now...adding high-resolution data (not imaginitive painting, or altered data--but truthful data)to a widefield image is not painting, and PI would be MUCH stronger for it.
So--it can be done in PI....that's good to know.
BTW...I'll fill you in on a little secret that you probably already suspect....mabe it causes you to grind your teeth at night, but 99% of PI users are just trying to make "pretty pictures". I will fill you in on an ancillary secret that you should ponder...just because we make pretty pictures does not mean we are not staying true to the data, and portraying what is actually there. Astrophotography is nothing more or less than landscape photography in principle. Not many want to paint--they want to represent. At least I do. The fact that the creator of PI thinks that adding high-resolution data to a widefield image is "painting" and somehow to be eschewed........quite frankly worries me. I find it disturbing to the point of being scary. I will proceed under the assumption that this was all a sleep deprived hallucination.....it has to be...........and all is well again.
Rodd
Recent Posts
