PixInsight Newbie Intros?

[William McLaughlin]

Hi:

I have been away from astro imaging for several years due to a lot of factors unrelated to astronomy but am in the process of getting things set up to start imaging again,
mostly from a new observatory http://www.orionobservatory.com/index.html that I expect to have online in the fall (although I will be doing some testing at my old site at home this summer).
I am presently in the process of acquiring/reacquiring software. I have the usual (CS4, ACP, MaxImDL, etc.) but was thinking about adding PixInsight to the mix as it appears quite powerful.
When I imaged last it was in a pretty primitive form and although I was aware of it, never tried it. I think it is fair to say it's interface is a bit different and I was wondering if there is a good
tutorial that explains the basic interface, as opposed to the tutorials for various processing functions (which are quite good tutorials, BTW).

I am not without experience (when I started imaging, the ST6 was high end <g>), but it would be helpful to find a basic interface explanation. I noted that the program does not have the traditional help files.

Thanks

Bill McLaughlin

http://nightskypictures.com/

[Jack Harvey]

Good to see you here Bill.  You might want to take a look at the video tutorials for beginners here    http://www.harrysastroshed.com/pixinsighthome.html

[William McLaughlin]

Thanks Jack. I have grabbed those and they look very good. I was hoping that something more "generic" was available specifically
tailored to the interface that all of the functions have in common. For example, how the real time preview works vs. the standard
(area) preview, or how the drag to apply works, or the various editors and explorers, etc. I am sure one could figure this out but I keep
thinking there ought to be a easier way to get up and running in that sense. Clearly the effects of various settings within functions
is something that is mostly gained by experience, but I am thinking more about those aspects of the interface that are unusual
compared to most of the other programs.

Maybe the problem is that the tutorials are written by folks only after they become experienced, by which time the odd interface
has become second nature to them and they do not feel that those aspects are worth a tutorial.

I have the 30 day demo that is set to expire in about a week and need to decide if I want to proceed with the purchase.
There is no shortage of processing programs out there and I have used many of them from MaxIm to Mira. PixInsight just looks
to be more powerful as well as more all-inclusive than most. I do have to say, however, I am a bit intimidated by the unusual interface.
It is different, but many powerful programs are (perhaps by necessity). I am reminded of the old DOS-based Mira which was king of the
powerful but bizarre in it's day. <g>

[Fco. Bosch]

I Think that what you search is in http://pixinsight.com/doc/LE/, referred to LE, but it can aid still.

Regards

[mmirot]

Welcome Back to fold Bill,
You did some fine early work. I have been imaging for nine years with about a 4 years of rest periods in between too.

Image processing techniques have come a long way in the last five years.
I takes time to learn this plateform but is well worth it. The video tutorials are great way to start.
Some say there is not much documentation for PI.
However, it took along time for good teaching materials to become availible on PS for astrophotographers.

Actually, there is more than you think but it is spread around in videos tutorials, written tutorials, and examples. There is a lot of information in the forums too. I would say it takes a couple weeks to reach critical learning mass. The UI is very thoughtful and eligent once you get confortible.

I have been using PI for about six months and I do about 80% PI and 20% photoshop now.

There has been many improvements and rapid develpement of some really nice tools in just this time alone.
There a some very basic operations that are just done better than PS.  To name a few: Streches, histograms, curves,  channel combines and color/saturation control.

Max Mirot

[Nocturnal]

Bill,

the video tutorials for pixinsight are linked from the left hand side of the front page. Once you sit through all of those (it's more than an hour) you should be capable of doing at least the basics. It's not *that* hard and different you know Simply pause and rewind the video as needed. The text is a bit 'wooly' with lots of superlatives but the content is solid.

I suppose I can add a plug for astrophotoinsights magazine for which I just wrote an introduction to PI. More parts to follow. I think the subscription is well worth it and not just for my articles

[William McLaughlin]

Thanks for all the input! The LE documentation seems to contain most of what I was looking for.
I will take a close look at it and then go on to do some processing.

I suspect I will purchase the full version of PixInsight, just too hard to resist. <g>

Nice to see such a helpful forum - I don't suppose any of you have any suggestions as to how to make
these bloody thunderstorms to go away?  My spray can of "Cloud-Be-Gone" is empty.

[Harry page]

Hi Bill

Welcome to the fold and hope you stay awhile

I know the interface is different from other programs , but its not their fault
"
I did think about doing a " say hello to Pixinsight " video but I did not know how to keep it relatively short, perhaps I should
give it some more thought as I know sometimes I / We suffer from "  I Know so why don't you syndrome"

Regards Harry

[William McLaughlin]

Hi Bill
I did think about doing a " say hello to Pixinsight " video but I did not know how to keep it relatively short, perhaps I should
give it some more thought as I know sometimes I / We suffer from "  I Know so why don't you syndrome"

Regards Harry

I think that the LE help page should mostly do the trick. I have always wondered about software that defies the more commonly
used interface conventions. In many cases there are very good reasons for software to work the way it does and that may indeed
be the case here. Having said that, I wonder how many potential users are scared away by something new and different and perhaps
intimidating. That is where a good intro might help not only the users, but perhaps even the rate of adoption. I really don't know,
just speculating.

In any case, I probably will buy the software as it is hard to pass up what it will allow a power user to do once one learns the software.

I do thank you and the others for the tutorials. Having done a few astro-tutorials in the past on other software, I know how much work they are!

Take Care

[Cheyenne]

I too have been going through the videos (thanks to everyone who has been making them).

As a long term visual astronomer, but kind of a newbie for doing astrophotography here are some of the "intro" things I think would be helpful.

• In creating the videos, becareful of using keyboard shortcuts, I had to go through several of the vidoes several times and try to figure out what was happening on the screen because the cursor "modes" where being switched around by keyboard shortcuts (i.e. switching from panning to zooming, etc.)
• A video tour of the UI -- while the UI does make sense (cudos to the developers), it might be helpful to have a tour on how to navigate and use the user interface.
• I would maybe also include a quick video tour of the interaction of PixMath and image views - not so much on what PixMath does, but how to interact with it from the UI. I am aware of the documentation for PixMath, which is fine as a reference.
• Some elementry workflow examples.  With the advent of DSLR cameras, and cheaper CCD cameras, it might be helpful to have some collections of elementry workflows for one or two of  these types of devices.  Basically a simple cookbook list of how to take a couple of lights, darks and bias frames, and get them loaded, calibrated, and intergrated using PixInsight.
  
  Having some elementry workflow examples for just doing the basics will help people who may be new to image processing and astrophotography.  Most of the current list of tutorials assume that the image is loaded and ready to go.

Anyway -- just some ideas.

I've been "waiting" for something like PixInsight for a while and am very happy with it so far.

[Harry page]

Hi  Cheyenne

Thanks for the critical input always welcome 

I thought in my tutorials I had mentioned shortcuts when using them ( could be wrong ) , will try harder
Looks like a welcome jobbie is going to have to done and will try to include some of your suggestions.
At the moment I think PI is not usable for calibrating images , but the new aligning and integration modules are working well and will put these on my list

regards Harry

[Cheyenne]

It helps at times to have someone from "outside" or "new" take a look at something because they can sometimes see something that to others is now "obvious"

Calibration can be done (or at least I think it can be done using PI), it's just a manual process of processing the biases, darks and flats against the image files before you align them. -or- you use another program such as DeepSky Stacker (which doesn't run under Linux).

But anyway ... my greatest appreciation to those who are out there making these tutorials.

[Harry page]

Hi Cheyenne

Wood and trees as they say 

I choose my word as not usable,  meaning that while possible its not very easy and hopefully in time there will be a module to automate it

Harry

[Cheyenne]

Well.. in this case, I wasn't quite sure if there was something that I was "missing" when you said that PI couldn't do image calibration. 

And the "while possible it's not very easy..."  was the reason why I was looking for a couple of basic no-frills examples of how to do it for some of the lower end folks

I might see if I can come up with a script for doing a Canon 20Da calibration (will give me a good excuse to play around with the scripting in PI)

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Cheyenne,

It helps at times to have someone from "outside" or "new" take a look at something because they can sometimes see something that to others is now "obvious"

Write that on stone

A video tour of the UI

Once I release PI 1.5.3, I'll start working on a new series of video tutorials. I plan on making some introductory tutorials to describe basic things such as PI's user interface, including a description of PI's object-oriented UI paradigm. I agree this is absolutely necessary.

Definitely there will be Image calibration tools in PixInsight. This is in fact the only thing we lack to have a reasonably complete solution for astrophotography.

I might see if I can come up with a script for doing a Canon 20Da calibration (will give me a good excuse to play around with the scripting in PI)

I encourage you! There's a lot of activity around PI scripting, with extremely interesting tools being developed.