Hi Dave,
Welcome to PixInsight Forum!
Yeah, you're sitted in a F430 Scuderia. Just don't give it too much gas for now and everything will be fine
The first thing I want to say is that I firmly stick up for DeepSkyStacker. It is an extremely efficient and easy-to-use software package to calibrate your images. I recommend it without a doubt.
To start using PixInsight, take a look at these video tutorials:
http://pixinsight.com/videos/DBE_M42_Example/en.htmlThey describe a complete processing work and will help you to get your feet wet (and keep them on the ground) with image processing in PixInsight.
There are a number of tutorials and processing examples. Some are advanced, some are very advanced, and then other are introductory. I recommend you to start with these:
http://pixinsight.com/examples/intro/dbosch-ha/en.htmlhttp://pixinsight.com/examples/M45-sonnenstein/en.htmlOf course, this forum is the best place to get help and discuss everything about PixInsight. I am a lucky guy to have so many fine folks here.
We are right now working like crazy to finish new version 1.5 of PixInsight. This is a major version with a lot of improvements and some new important tools, in which we are investing almost all of our resources. Once we release it, we have a lot of video tutorials planned. Video tutorials are the best learning resources and we are betting strong on them.
Astrophotography, and especially image processing, requires patience above anything else. You'll never get too much of that, actually. Don't be in a hurry; try to learn step by step. First the basic elements (image formats, histograms, image statistics, ...), then more and more advanced things, in growing order of complexity. Don't try to apply all processing tools the first time. You'll be surprised with what can be achieved with a simple histogram stretch and a couple simple expressions applied with PixelMath.
The pre-processing part is extremely important, so you'd better dedicate time and effort learning to use DSS. As any (nontrivial) software package, it has a learning curve, that can't be avoided. If your images aren't calibrated well, your chances to post-process them reduce drastically. From my experience, an overwhelmingly large number of failure stories in astrophotography are due to bad image calibration.
PixInsight isn't an easy-to-use application. Neither it is intended to be such. Our goal is to provide the most powerful and versatile image processing platform. With PixInsight, you gain full control on everything you do with your images. Of course, having the control means assuming the responsibility. But without having the control there is no fun, just as driving a F430
You'll find substantial differences between PixInsight's graphical user interface and other imaging applications. This is just because PixInsight uses different (better, in our opinion) paradigms. Once you acquaint yourself with the
PixInsight way, you'll see that working with PixInsight is easy and fun. Just be patient --with yourself, mainly--, that's all.
