A Radical Suggestion - Charge for Next Major PI Update

[Geoff]

The annual subscription model does not seem to guarantee true product development. With purchase and subscriptions I have spent >$1,000US on MaximDL which, apart from updated camera support, a little (half successful) Windows7 tweaking and a few bug-fixes, has seen little true development in several years. In my workflow it is now relegated to Camera Control and even that is soon to be dropped.

I cannot bear to add up how much I spent on 10 years of Photoshop upgrades which added little real funtionality for photographers, several licencing headaches and as I moved over to MAC no cross platform arrangement. $79 on Aperture and I have not touched PS since.

The puzzling thing, as Juan has noted, is that PixInsight is seen as expensive.  Yet it is far cheaper than a lot of the other software that astrophotographers use, as we see by the previous post from Chris.
Geoff

[chris.bailey]

Geoff

I think there is a fundamental difference in value recognition between current and potential users. Those of us who use it a lot see it as good value, maybe with a degree of hindsight. Potential users are more likely to see it as expensive. It the classic high end product conundrum.

Chris

[Bob Hertel]

Juan,
I'm a new user who has slowly but steadily come to appreciate the PixInsight approach.  The truth be told, although I think of my self as a rather bright individual, I both admire and feel somewhat intimidated by the sheer intellectual horsepower evident in your and the Team's grasp of and application of mathematics that I only dimly grasp, at best.  (The intimidated part connects to the frustration I sometimes feel in that if I knew more, I'd be able to use the tools in a more reasoned fashion).  But what prompts this note is to tell you how much I value your response to the issue of charging extra for the product.  It's not that I'm happy not to have to spend more, but rather that I value the integrity of your mindset, your dedication to the astronomical community, and the fact that there are principles that are worth more to you than money.  We've never met, but I want you to know that in addition to respecting your intelligence and talent, I respect and appreciate you as a person.  And for what it's worth, from a marketing perspective or otherwise, now I have one more compelling reason to talk with others about how much I value PixInsight.  Thank you, Juan.

[astropixel]

Ditto

[Flea77]

At the risk of "making friends" as my wife puts it I thought you might like to hear a real newcommers point of view of PI:

I have been on both sides of the equation, as a photographer I own Lightroom, Photoshop and many plugins for both ranging from free to a couple hundred each. As an AP guy I just started a little under a year ago and have used free programs such as DSS, Registax, etc and then move the results into Lightroom and finally Photoshop. I mention all this because I have used lots of free software but do not have a problem paying for "the good stuff".

I was on a forum and someone suggested PI and showed me a little of what it can do. I was very impressed with the results and was having issues with DSS and a certain set of images. I got the trial of PI and it did a far and away better job that my old workflow. So far, results are excellent.

Now the bad, and I am saying all this to be honest, not to hurt anyone's feelings, but hoping you get a feel for what a new user sees today.

The Interface:
The first thing I noticed was the interface looks very much like a open source Linux project. The layout, the colors, the icons, and even the text, all scream X windows to me (no suprise here, it is developed with QT which is an open source SDK). It lacks the spit and polish of commercial applications such as Lightroom and Photoshop even though it is priced in that ballpark (Photoshop Elements anyway). Heck, even DSS is slicker and it is free.

Functionality:
Obviously this is a way more powerful app than anything I have used before for this. Unfortunately it also completely hogs the CPU (i7 quad, 16GB RAM, 256GB SATA6 SSD primary, 1TB 7200 secondary), to the point it is almost impossible to do anything else on the computer. Yes, I realize that when you are processing images you should not be doing all kinds of other things but it isn't like I wanted to play Battlefield 3, I just wanted to read a message board. I was forced to abandon the computer and go to the iPad for that. I can set Lightroom to process a ton of images and export them all to an online gallery while I do anything else on the computer I like, no problems. Next, Items I place in the favorites section disappeared, twice.

Documentation:
Non-existant. Lightroom, Photoshop, and even DSS have users manuals and video tutorials. Heck, PS and LR have tons of books on Amazon.com you can buy, from complete newbie to extremely advanced. Now PI has some video tutorials, Harry's are great, but they show me a little of what I can do with a few tools and no details at all. The bulk of the tools are not shown or explained at all. This made it very, and I want to emphasize this point, VERY fustrating getting my first image done. With most software I use you can get the first one crudely done very easily, then go back and tweak stuff to see what it does. With PI, I spent hours trying to get one image stacked and out the door so to speak just to get an idea of what the program could do. I came very close at this point to chucking the whole thing and looking at alternatives such as ImagesPlus.

Misc:
Aside from the disappearing favorites, click on Resources and then Wiki, error 404. How is this when I have had two or three sets of updates since I got the program about a week ago? Photoshop and Lightroom remember where my files are and open or save them according to the action I am running at the moment. PI doesn't care if I am looking for a light, bias or dark, it opens the same directory. This is a pain as I keep my darks etc in one folder and my lights in several others by date and then target. This means a lot of clicks every time. After the last update when I went to run the BatchPreprocess script a pop-up came up that basically told me by using the script instead of doing things manually my images would be garbage, how nice. The one saving grace to getting up and running is now telling me it is junk that was included in the software.

Now, given all of this I have been trying my best to learn PI, and with the results I have been getting I am 90% sure I will be purchasing it. I am also 90% sure I will never understand 90% of it. So basically I am looking at spending $200+ US on a upgrade for DSS which was free, and DBE which was free in PI LE. THAT is what I see as expensive, very very expensive. Without documentation I do not see myself coming in to the forums and asking what every single tickbox, slider and button do so I seriously doubt I will ever get far past the basics which is unfortunate. That means that although PI may be the most powerful and flexible AP program in the world, to me, all that power is completely lost.

Anyway, that is a newcommer's view of PI with only a week's experience. Flame away....

Allan

[pfile]

i don't really have a dog in this fight, other than being a happy longtime user of pixinsight. i do, however, enjoy running in the special olympics, so here goes nothing.

The Interface:
The first thing I noticed was the interface looks very much like a open source Linux project. The layout, the colors, the icons, and even the text, all scream X windows to me (no suprise here, it is developed with QT which is an open source SDK). It lacks the spit and polish of commercial applications such as Lightroom and Photoshop even though it is priced in that ballpark (Photoshop Elements anyway). Heck, even DSS is slicker and it is free.

this is true but it is the cost of cross-platform compatibility on a time/resource budget. as a linux and OSX user i'll just say i'll gladly take QT over no pixinsight at all. perhaps this comes at the expense of windows users, but in all honesty the program does not have to look pretty to get it's job done.

Functionality:
Obviously this is a way more powerful app than anything I have used before for this. Unfortunately it also completely hogs the CPU (i7 quad, 16GB RAM, 256GB SATA6 SSD primary, 1TB 7200 secondary), to the point it is almost impossible to do anything else on the computer. Yes, I realize that when you are processing images you should not be doing all kinds of other things but it isn't like I wanted to play Battlefield 3, I just wanted to read a message board. I was forced to abandon the computer and go to the iPad for that. I can set Lightroom to process a ton of images and export them all to an online gallery while I do anything else on the computer I like, no problems. Next, Items I place in the favorites section disappeared, twice.

this is a valid complaint, but i have to wonder if this is an artifact of windows suckage. i never have this kind of problem on osx or linux. PI does have problems on OSX that can sometimes render the computer unusable but as far as resource usage goes, i don't see these kinds of problems.

Documentation:
Non-existant. Lightroom, Photoshop, and even DSS have users manuals and video tutorials. Heck, PS and LR have tons of books on Amazon.com you can buy, from complete newbie to extremely advanced. Now PI has some video tutorials, Harry's are great, but they show me a little of what I can do with a few tools and no details at all. The bulk of the tools are not shown or explained at all. This made it very, and I want to emphasize this point, VERY fustrating getting my first image done. With most software I use you can get the first one crudely done very easily, then go back and tweak stuff to see what it does. With PI, I spent hours trying to get one image stacked and out the door so to speak just to get an idea of what the program could do. I came very close at this point to chucking the whole thing and looking at alternatives such as ImagesPlus.

this is a longtime criticism which has partial merit. i can only speak for myself here, but i really never needed any documentation other than what is in this forum, and some astrophotography processing books which are actually focused on photoshop. currently, the state of pixinsight documentation is way, way ahead of where it was when i started. and the basic concepts of astronomical image processing are the same no matter what tools you are using.

as far as tutorials, etc. it's really up to the community to do that stuff. no one knocks adobe for not having an astrophotography tutorial as part of their PS documentation, so i don't know why PI should be any different. we're lucky to have some very expert imagers and processors post their techniques in this forum and elsewhere.

Misc:
Aside from the disappearing favorites, click on Resources and then Wiki, error 404. How is this when I have had two or three sets of updates since I got the program about a week ago? Photoshop and Lightroom remember where my files are and open or save them according to the action I am running at the moment. PI doesn't care if I am looking for a light, bias or dark, it opens the same directory. This is a pain as I keep my darks etc in one folder and my lights in several others by date and then target. This means a lot of clicks every time. After the last update when I went to run the BatchPreprocess script a pop-up came up that basically told me by using the script instead of doing things manually my images would be garbage, how nice. The one saving grace to getting up and running is now telling me it is junk that was included in the software.

there are so many updates because this software is very much alive, and complex, and there are always bug fixes to push and new features to implement.

i agree that PI could do a much better job of binding recently used directories to processes.

i'm not really sure what you mean about the last point. if you are saying that the script tells you that the results of checking "integrate" in the batch processing gui could be suboptimal, well, i guess you have more to learn about integrating stacks of images. pixel rejection parameters do take some trial and error to dial in the right settings. there are simply too many knobs in ImageIntegration to copy them all into the batchpreprocessing script.

Now, given all of this I have been trying my best to learn PI, and with the results I have been getting I am 90% sure I will be purchasing it. I am also 90% sure I will never understand 90% of it. So basically I am looking at spending $200+ US on a upgrade for DSS which was free, and DBE which was free in PI LE. THAT is what I see as expensive, very very expensive. Without documentation I do not see myself coming in to the forums and asking what every single tickbox, slider and button do so I seriously doubt I will ever get far past the basics which is unfortunate. That means that although PI may be the most powerful and flexible AP program in the world, to me, all that power is completely lost.

you do know about the documentation browser in PI right? sure, not every process is documented but a lot of them are. do you know about the tooltips that describe all the sliders and input boxes in each process?

don't take *this* the wrong way but it is an insult to refer to PI as merely an upgrade to DSS. maybe it is only that for you, but it is certainly not that to the rest of us.

[Flea77]

this is true but it is the cost of cross-platform compatibility on a time/resource budget. as a linux and OSX user i'll just say i'll gladly take QT over no pixinsight at all. perhaps this comes at the expense of windows users, but in all honesty the program does not have to look pretty to get it's job done.

I agree, pretty != powerful. However if you were to compare PI with say Photoshop Elements for Windows/Mac, both are cross platform yet Photoshop is far more "polished", and while that may have nothing what so ever to do with functionality, it does have something to do with convincing newcommers to plop down twice the price of Photoshop Elements on PI.

this is a valid complaint, but i have to wonder if this is an artifact of windows suckage. i never have this kind of problem on osx or linux. PI does have problems on OSX that can sometimes render the computer unusable but as far as resource usage goes, i don't see these kinds of problems.

You know, we could sit here and argue which OS sucks more all day long and it wouldn't matter. As a end user I could care less if it is 100% the fault of the Windows kernel. Adobe software runs good, PI software runs bad, who do you think typical users are going to blame? Or lets put this in the frame of two small companies, ImagesPlus runs good, PI runs bad, now who ya gonna blame?

this is a longtime criticism which has partial merit. i can only speak for myself here, but i really never needed any documentation other than what is in this forum, and some astrophotography processing books which are actually focused on photoshop. currently, the state of pixinsight documentation is way, way ahead of where it was when i started. and the basic concepts of astronomical image processing are the same no matter what tools you are using.

as far as tutorials, etc. it's really up to the community to do that stuff. no one knocks adobe for not having an astrophotography tutorial as part of their PS documentation, so i don't know why PI should be any different. we're lucky to have some very expert imagers and processors post their techniques in this forum and elsewhere.

I don't knock Adobe for not having AP tutorials any more than I knock PI for not having portrait retouching tutorials. The fact remains I can get any level of documentation for Photoshop I want for any feature I want. Maybe not for a specific image type, but if I want to get a book that has hundreds of pages on curves and histograms, I can find it.

Now not knocking the community here, I am far too new for that. But to me, the newbie, the guy with little experience who is debating on whether or not to plop down a couple hundred bucks, it matters.

there are so many updates because this software is very much alive, and complex, and there are always bug fixes to push and new features to implement.

i agree that PI could do a much better job of binding recently used directories to processes.

i'm not really sure what you mean about the last point. if you are saying that the script tells you that the results of checking "integrate" in the batch processing gui could be suboptimal, well, i guess you have more to learn about integrating stacks of images. pixel rejection parameters do take some trial and error to dial in the right settings. there are simply too many knobs in ImageIntegration to copy them all into the batchpreprocessing script.

Isn't it one of the major gripes of Mac users all those Windows updates and patches? :-)

The wording on the pop up box was not as nice as saying "suboptimal", it left me thinking "complete garbage". If it had come up and simply said that I could do a better job by doing things manually, hey, I have no problem with that at all.

you do know about the documentation browser in PI right? sure, not every process is documented but a lot of them are. do you know about the tooltips that describe all the sliders and input boxes in each process?

don't take *this* the wrong way but it is an insult to refer to PI as merely an upgrade to DSS. maybe it is only that for you, but it is certainly not that to the rest of us.

I know of nothing called "documentation browser", there is no such entry under Resources in the menu. There is also no "Help" menu that I can find. I did however see (just right now while looking for the browser) that if you single click on a tool it shows some documentation, that is helpful, must have missed that in the tutorials. Interesting note, out of the main five things I have been using, ACDNR, BatchPreprocesing, DynamicBackgroundExtraction, HistogramTransformation and SCNR, only one has documentation there.

You mention tooltips, yes I have seen them. But here is the thing. Open the HistogramTransformation, hover over the Shadows: 0.00000 box, it says "Shadows Clipping", which tells *me* absolutely nothing.

I thought I was very clear about PI being a upgrade for DSS with the addition of DBE *FOR ME* because of the lack of documentation making it very difficult *FOR ME* to learn about other features and options in PI. I thought that was obvious from the statement right after it where I said "PI may be the most powerful and flexible AP program in the world, to me, all that power is completely lost."

Again, let me be very clear, I am not knocking the power or flexibility of PI. I am also not knocking the price. I am trying to convey how newcommers such as myself may be put off by the price due to the factors I mentioned. Here is an analogy for you, you go out and purchase the top of the line Craftsman automotive tool set, 540 pieces, over $1200us, but all you ever learn to use is the screwdrivers because you can't figure out how anything else fits together and there is no documentation telling you how. Yes, that is a little silly, but I think it gets the point across.

Here is another one for you. For a living my day job is IT. I can install SQL server blindfolded, 2000-2008r2 (haven't played with 2012 yet). When I first installed 2008 I didn't need any documentation at all to get it up and running, attach the databases from the 2005 server, do a consistancy check, set up the ODBC connectors and get it working with the frontends. Now take someone who thinks SQL server is Sequell server and have them try that with nothing but a forum. I would love to video tape that and send it in to America's Funniest Home Videos! That is exactly how I feel right now.

Allan

[pfile]

this is true but it is the cost of cross-platform compatibility on a time/resource budget. as a linux and OSX user i'll just say i'll gladly take QT over no pixinsight at all. perhaps this comes at the expense of windows users, but in all honesty the program does not have to look pretty to get it's job done.

I agree, pretty != powerful. However if you were to compare PI with say Photoshop Elements for Windows/Mac, both are cross platform yet Photoshop is far more "polished", and while that may have nothing what so ever to do with functionality, it does have something to do with convincing newcommers to plop down twice the price of Photoshop Elements on PI.

if you are evaluating scientific/technical software on how the "packaging" looks then i don't think i can say anything that helps. the other thing is this - how big is Pteam? 3, 4 people? start up lightroom and look at the banner. how many people do you see there? is it any wonder that adobe has a suite of beautiful cross-platform products? Juan and company just don't have those resources. you have to consider the size of the team and how resources are allocated.

this is a valid complaint, but i have to wonder if this is an artifact of windows suckage. i never have this kind of problem on osx or linux. PI does have problems on OSX that can sometimes render the computer unusable but as far as resource usage goes, i don't see these kinds of problems.

You know, we could sit here and argue which OS sucks more all day long and it wouldn't matter. As a end user I could care less if it is 100% the fault of the Windows kernel. Adobe software runs good, PI software runs bad, who do you think typical users are going to blame? Or lets put this in the frame of two small companies, ImagesPlus runs good, PI runs bad, now who ya gonna blame?

the comparison really does not hold. does ImagesPlus run on windows, linux and macosx? it's another facet of the point i made: PI is a very small shop trying to provide value to all computer users. if mike has a problem with the OS, he fixes it once. when Juan and company have these problems, they may have to fix it 3 times and then play whack-a-mole with bugs.

dealing with OS bugs is part of the cross-platform game, and Juan has certainly coded his share of workarounds for every platform. i'm not letting him off the hook, i'm just saying that 2 out of 3 OSs do not have this problem. maybe this problem will be fixed in the next version of PI, who knows. other people have definitely reported this problem, if you look at the forum. i think there is a workaround to lower the priority at which PI runs under windows, if i remember correctly.

this is a longtime criticism which has partial merit. i can only speak for myself here, but i really never needed any documentation other than what is in this forum, and some astrophotography processing books which are actually focused on photoshop. currently, the state of pixinsight documentation is way, way ahead of where it was when i started. and the basic concepts of astronomical image processing are the same no matter what tools you are using.

as far as tutorials, etc. it's really up to the community to do that stuff. no one knocks adobe for not having an astrophotography tutorial as part of their PS documentation, so i don't know why PI should be any different. we're lucky to have some very expert imagers and processors post their techniques in this forum and elsewhere.

I don't knock Adobe for not having AP tutorials any more than I knock PI for not having portrait retouching tutorials. The fact remains I can get any level of documentation for Photoshop I want for any feature I want. Maybe not for a specific image type, but if I want to get a book that has hundreds of pages on curves and histograms, I can find it.

Now not knocking the community here, I am far too new for that. But to me, the newbie, the guy with little experience who is debating on whether or not to plop down a couple hundred bucks, it matters.

have you considered the relative sizes of the astrophotography market and the general-purpose terrestrial photography market? does that provide insight into why there are so many books available for Photoshop? by the way that same book about curves and histograms is definitely applicable to PI.

you say you have been doing this for about a year, so you should know the basics. what part of PI are you having problems with? the rough order of what steps to apply to an astronomical image are pretty much the same no matter what tools you are using. if you have done it all by the seat of your pants in other applications, maybe it makes sense to get a book and read thru it - most likely such books will talk about photoshop, but the core concepts are the same. the AIP book is considered the bible, but unfortunately it's pretty expensive and comes with it's own software that you would probably not use if you are using PI instead.

there are so many updates because this software is very much alive, and complex, and there are always bug fixes to push and new features to implement.

i agree that PI could do a much better job of binding recently used directories to processes.

i'm not really sure what you mean about the last point. if you are saying that the script tells you that the results of checking "integrate" in the batch processing gui could be suboptimal, well, i guess you have more to learn about integrating stacks of images. pixel rejection parameters do take some trial and error to dial in the right settings. there are simply too many knobs in ImageIntegration to copy them all into the batchpreprocessing script.

Isn't it one of the major gripes of Mac users all those Windows updates and patches? :-)

The wording on the pop up box was not as nice as saying "suboptimal", it left me thinking "complete garbage". If it had come up and simply said that I could do a better job by doing things manually, hey, I have no problem with that at all.

one thing you have to be sensitive to here is this is very much an international community. while english was definitely good enough for Jesus, it is not the primary language of PI's authors, nor is it the native language of the person who wrote the script. you're just going to have to give people a break if the nuances of their english conveys spurious meaning to you. maybe point out in the batchpreprocessing script thread that as a native english speaker, the wording left you with a very negative impression. maybe juan can fix it in the next update.

you do know about the documentation browser in PI right? sure, not every process is documented but a lot of them are. do you know about the tooltips that describe all the sliders and input boxes in each process?

don't take *this* the wrong way but it is an insult to refer to PI as merely an upgrade to DSS. maybe it is only that for you, but it is certainly not that to the rest of us.

I know of nothing called "documentation browser", there is no such entry under Resources in the menu. There is also no "Help" menu that I can find. I did however see (just right now while looking for the browser) that if you single click on a tool it shows some documentation, that is helpful, must have missed that in the tutorials. Interesting note, out of the main five things I have been using, ACDNR, BatchPreprocesing, DynamicBackgroundExtraction, HistogramTransformation and SCNR, only one has documentation there.

You mention tooltips, yes I have seen them. But here is the thing. Open the HistogramTransformation, hover over the Shadows: 0.00000 box, it says "Shadows Clipping", which tells *me* absolutely nothing.

coming out guns blazing before asking for help is not necessarily the best strategy. but if you had asked, you might have found out about the browser before getting all frustrated. check out some of the tooltips in ImageIntegration, for instance - they are extremely detailed. or look at the documentation for ImageIntegration in the process explorer. the documentation that exists is really top-notch, textbook quality stuff.

again if you were to read about astronomical image processing in general, you'd know what "shadows clipping" is, but even if you have only ever used lightroom you should be able to figure this out.

don't take *this* the wrong way but it is an insult to refer to PI as merely an upgrade to DSS. maybe it is only that for you, but it is certainly not that to the rest of us.

I thought I was very clear about PI being a upgrade for DSS with the addition of DBE *FOR ME* because of the lack of documentation making it very difficult *FOR ME* to learn about other features and options in PI. I thought that was obvious from the statement right after it where I said "PI may be the most powerful and flexible AP program in the world, to me, all that power is completely lost."

Again, let me be very clear, I am not knocking the power or flexibility of PI. I am also not knocking the price. I am trying to convey how newcommers such as myself may be put off by the price due to the factors I mentioned. Here is an analogy for you, you go out and purchase the top of the line Craftsman automotive tool set, 540 pieces, over $1200us, but all you ever learn to use is the screwdrivers because you can't figure out how anything else fits together and there is no documentation telling you how. Yes, that is a little silly, but I think it gets the point across.

Here is another one for you. For a living my day job is IT. I can install SQL server blindfolded, 2000-2008r2 (haven't played with 2012 yet). When I first installed 2008 I didn't need any documentation at all to get it up and running, attach the databases from the 2005 server, do a consistancy check, set up the ODBC connectors and get it working with the frontends. Now take someone who thinks SQL server is Sequell server and have them try that with nothing but a forum. I would love to video tape that and send it in to America's Funniest Home Videos! That is exactly how I feel right now.

Allan

this goes right to my point. i doubt you would go down to sears and buy that 540 piece set, and then complain that it did not come with the haynes manual for your car and a full correspondence course about auto repair. you would probably already be a mechanic, or at least have repaired your car before, starting small and working up to major repairs, before buying that kit. likewise with your day job, do you think you could have installed SQL server on the same day that you first touched a PC? similarly would you really expect the documentation for any database software to start with: "step one, connect your PC to a power outlet and turn it on. now look at that thing next to your keyboard. it is called a mouse..."? that is a reduction to the absurd but you probably could not even expect the SQL server documentation to contain a tutorial about what a relational database is.

i'm just trying to say that there's a lot to learn about astronomical image processing that's independent of PI. PI is a tool just like the craftsman set. the documentation for PI should really just tell you how to operate the tools, not necessarily which tool is for what.

having said that, and to your point about documentation and the "rest" of the program being inaccessible to you, have you checked out the following links:

http://pixinsight.com/examples/index.html

and

http://pixinsight.com/tutorials/index.html

?

also Alejandro Tombolini has written a few very illuminating forum posts like this one, where he describes all of his processing with screenshots:

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=4385.msg30892#msg30892

RBA has written a number of excellent tutorials:

http://blog.deepskycolors.com/tutorials.html

sean has a great page of links here:

http://www.drakevisual.com/pixinsight-links/

anyway, yes i understand what you are saying from a 10,000 foot view. i guess you have to temper your expectations with the knowledge of how big of an operation PI is and how much they can be expected to do on their own.

[Juan Conejero]

The Interface:
The first thing I noticed was the interface looks very much like a open source Linux project. The layout, the colors, the icons, and even the text, all scream X windows to me (no suprise here, it is developed with QT which is an open source SDK). It lacks the spit and polish of commercial applications such as Lightroom and Photoshop even though it is priced in that ballpark (Photoshop Elements anyway). Heck, even DSS is slicker and it is free.

this is true but it is the cost of cross-platform compatibility on a time/resource budget. as a linux and OSX user i'll just say i'll gladly take QT over no pixinsight at all. perhaps this comes at the expense of windows users, but in all honesty the program does not have to look pretty to get it's job done.

Besides the fact that open source projects and X11 do not necessarily lack any "polishment" at all---as a palmary example, take a look at any of the latest versions of the KDE desktop---, I disagree with the above statements and comments. Of course there is a large room for improvement in PixInsight, and we have a lot of work to do, but currently I am proud of PixInsight's interfaces (it has three). As for the graphical interface, it is nice, efficient and elegant in my opinion.

A couple examples of PI's GUI in action where you can see icons, tool windows, workspace compositing effects and animations, among other things (note: these are Theora/OGV videos that can be seen on Firefox, Chrome and Opera among other applications):

http://pixinsight.com/videos/tmp/quick/workspace-1.ogv (8 MB)
http://pixinsight.com/videos/tmp/quick/workspace-2.ogv (18 MB)

A longer example with auto-hide windows, a hint of the three integrated interfaces (GUI, command-line and scripting interfaces), explorer windows and the integrated documentation/web browser:

http://pixinsight.com/videos/tmp/quick/workspace-3.ogv (132 MB)

Can the applications you have mentioned do any of these? PI's multiple workspace GUI allows you to structure and organize your data efficiently, as shown on this video:

http://pixinsight.com/videos/tmp/quick/workspaces.ogv (20 MB)

The whole PixInsight platform can be serialized as a project. PixInsight projects are XML-based data structures that allow you to restore the exact state of everything (images, previews, processing histories, icons, the states of all tools, editor files, etc.), as it was when you saved the project:

http://pixinsight.com/videos/tmp/quick/projects.ogv (18 MB)

Can the applications that you are putting as examples of "slickness" do something similar to that?

How about a tool (AdaptiveStretch) that computes an optimal brightness/contrast enhancement curve working in real-time preview mode? While the tool is computing the preview image and drawing a real-time curve graph, you can use an advanced GUI feature (virtual views) to compute and represent real-time histograms and statistics:

http://pixinsight.com/videos/tmp/quick/adaptive-stretch.ogv (18 MB)

Not shown on the video, but along with all of that you could also enable a mask on the image and quickly see the result of the process with and without the mask applied by just clicking a button on the Real-Time Preview interface.

The Blink tool, a software masterpiece written by PI user and developer Nikolay Volkov, is a good example of PI's real-time and multithreading capabilities. As you can see in the following video, you can perform a fast blinking comparison of a set of disk files while the GUI remains fully responsive:

http://pixinsight.com/videos/tmp/quick/blink.ogv (136 MB)

In the current 1.7 version there are some (minor) differences between platforms, but as of version 1.8.0 (due for release next July) everything behaves and looks *exactly* the same on FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows---thanks to Qt, by the way.

If you still think that PI's interface is "cheap", and/or "the cost to pay" for a cross-platform software, then we have very different views about graphical interfaces and software platforms in general. You may say that you don't like PI aesthetically---I disagree but of course everybody has his or her personal preferences---, but please analyze it more seriously and deeply before stating that PixInsight has an "unpolished" or "cheap" interface, because it is IMHO much more sophisticated, powerful, efficient and elegant than anything you can find in any of the applications you have mentioned.

Unfortunately it also completely hogs the CPU

This is a well-known problem on Windows that we have already fixed in version 1.8.0. The solution is very easy: just decrease the maximum thread priority. Do the following:

- Select Edit > Global Preferences

- On the Preferences tool, select the Parallel Processing and Threads section on the left panel.

- Set Maximum module thread priority to Normal.

- Click the Apply Global button, or press F6 to execute.

Alternatively, you can enter this command with the console:

   parallel -t=4

Next, Items I place in the favorites section disappeared, twice.

AFAIK, this has not been reported before. If this has happened to you, then I'd suggest you inform us about it on the Bug Reports forum board, instead of throwing it to us.

Documentation:
Non-existant.

A little bit exaggerated perhaps? Take a look at these:

http://pixinsight.com/doc/tools/
http://pixinsight.com/doc/docs/
http://pixinsight.com/examples/
http://pixinsight.com/tutorials/
http://pixinsight.com/videos/

and, in case you are a developer, also at these:

http://pixinsight.com/developer/pcl/doc/html/

The reference documentation is also available within the PixInsight Core application, using the integrated documentation browser. It is true that we still lack a *lot* of documentation, but heck, this is 99% the work of a single man---not an excuse, just a fact. I am working without rest on this project but right now this is all we have. A large multinational company would have done much better for sure.

Misc:
Aside from the disappearing favorites, click on Resources and then Wiki, error 404.

True. The wiki was discontinued some time ago, and I forgot to remove this menu item in the latest PI Core update. Again, you could have reported this issue on the Bug Reports board.

So basically I am looking at spending $200+ US on a upgrade for DSS which was free, and DBE which was free in PI LE.

Then I have to agree that PI is certainly expensive. PI LE will probably continue working on Windows for many years to come, and it can do quite a bunch of nice things.

[Flea77]

OK, I think somehow I have managed to miscommunicate my intent. Never once did I intend to bash PI or its developers. The thread was talking about charging for upgrades and led to some people may think PI is expensive. My intent was to give you the viewpoint of a newcommer which can all be boiled down to the following:

1) Newcommer gets trial software and installs it.
2) Looks for "users manual", there is none.
3) Looks for basic "how to stack images and get finished image" tutorial, there is none
4) Finds there is a script without tutorial or serious documentation, but does find a "how to", gets told by script image will be garbage.
5) Has favorites removed several times.
6) Sees computer completely unusable while processing.
7) Wonders why they paid nothing for DSS, can use DBE for free, and paid $100 for Photoshop Elements which looks much better and has great documentation and tutorials yet PI wants over twice as much.
8) Gets fustrated and goes somewhere else.

Now no amount of arguing, debating or explaining will change the fact that this will probably deter some people from purchasing PI. You can explain it to me until you are blue in the face, doesn't matter. I told you in the beginning I would be purchasing it and would muddle through. If you choose to ignore these concerns, so be it, good luck to you. I was just trying to share my views as a newcommer, not get lectured.

The fact that the development team is small, or that xxx software runs on Windows and Macos but not Linux will not matter to the typical newcommer, they will just see the price and the things they precieve as deficient and make a decision. They will most likely never post their concerns in the forum which is why I was trying to help and present that viewpoint. I apologize for that.

Allan

[pfile]

no one accused you of bashing juan & company. i'm just saying you have to understand that software is not magic, it is made by humans. more humans = more effort on things which are less essential. i don't see how one can expect all software to be created equally or have the same polish.

i don't speak for the company of course and no one is ignoring your concerns, at least i'm not. i'm not in the position to do anything about your concerns, but i can (and did) point you to collateral which you can use and learn from, and point out why i think some of the concerns can be forgiven in light of the situation.

i think i have about $10,000 invested in astro-related stuff. pixinsight was a very small part of that total. my personal opinion is that the software is cheap.

also, having been around for a while, i know that juan has heard all this before, and he's doing the best he can to address all of your points.

[astropixel]

Love is blind and we all love PI

[JGMoreau]

Hi, i would love to see the .ogv videos.
Can someone suggest a converter
preferably free 
so that i can open them on my Win 7 machine please ?
Thanks,

JG Moreau

[Flea77]

Hi, i would love to see the .ogv videos.
Can someone suggest a converter
preferably free 
so that i can open them on my Win 7 machine please ?
Thanks,

JG Moreau

Juan suggested you install another browser such as Firefox, Chrome or Opera. I can't view them either so I just ignored them.

Allan

[vicent_peris]

Hi Allan,

I would start by watching my videos here:

http://pixinsight.com/videos/NGC1808LRGB-vperis/en.html

Please, watch them carefully, as they have very important lessons. You can download the FITS files to practice with them; another option, for your learning curve, would be to start practicing with your own RGB image files (previously calibrated with DSS, for example).

After these videos, I would suggest to learn about the preprocessing techniques implemented in PixInsight. I think the preprocessing script is rather self-explicative, but I recommend you to read my article about master calibration frames, in order to better understand PixInsight's approach:

http://pixinsight.com/tutorials/master-frames/en.html

If you dominate these techniques you'll be able to make very good photos of the sky.

Aside from this, I think your comments about the GUI are partially a matter of taste. I personally don-t like the aesthetics of any of the software packages you mentioned. Moreover, their functionality is clearly outdated (specially  Photoshop).


Best regards,
Vicent.