PI Tutorials from Warren Keller and Rogelio Bernal Andreo

[Sean]

Just got an announcement in the QSI newsgroup that Warren and RBA have teamed together to produce a commercial series of PI tutorials.

http://www.ip4ap.com/pixinsight.htm

From the initial announcement, it appears as if these tutorials will be really helpful to PI users.  They aren't free, but seem reasonably priced to me, and Warren has a good track record with his tutorials.

I have no connection or commercial interest in them - just passing along the news.

Sean

[Josh Lake]

Yes, I signed up for the rolling release. Not too much new yet (though there are a couple of nice little reminders), but I look forward to seeing some excellent processing and the advanced topics done correctly.

The production value is very high, and yes, you get Warren's unique presentation style. 

[marekc]

I'm excited about this, too. I bought Warren's PS tutorials and thought he explained things very well. The combination of WK and RBA will be very interesting, and I think it will help people learn a lot about PI. This kind of thing is very good news for PI, I think, as it just adds to the amount of good instructional material out there.

(After all, the materials on astro-image-processing with PS weren't exactly written by the people at Adobe, to the best of my knowledge. This includes Warren's videos, Scott Ireland's book, and so on.)

- Marek

[Tom OD]

I've joined in to. I also bought Warrens PS tutorials which were a super help in getting me up and running in the processing side. I was always able to go back to them for reference to. Look forward to the full set.
Tom.

[jbunyan]

 I'm new to PI and Warren is really good at explaining the concepts. This is a great learning tool. I look forward to each new issue. Clear skies, John

[Warhen]

Thanks very much guys for your votes of confidence. They are much appreciated. It almost makes the excrutiating production process worthwhile. We're making good progress now, having finished both the primer and stacking segments, and having two done in the linear section. Working on background extraction now which is tough.

As we all know, there is a fair amount of good information out there. We're committed to culling from all of the best resources and by putting our own spin in the scripts, we are consolidating them into what I feel is the most concise presentation, with the convenience of having it available in one place.

I really appreciate the input of RBA, Juan, Harry, Sleshin, JLake and others who have been very helpful. OK, back to work!!

[pmesquita]

Hi all

I really like PI from the little I know on how to work with it (thanks to Harry and very few others) but let me get this straight to see if I can understand it properly:

...after paying €206 for my PI license, and since there is no instruction manual for this "very simple" program...and since all the info I need on the PI tools I have to dig out from this forum, since it's all scattered in many posts (not the forum's fault..it's a forum and not the official PI website)... I now need to buy the rolling tutorial packs at €49 each and that in the end it will mount up to about another €500 (say...ten packs with 5 tools explained in each).

So when I've spent about €700 in total I'll have a great program and a manual in the form of tutorials that I can't even download.

...hmmm... for a 52 year old and unemployed advertising copywriter, marketeer and strategist with a 25 year career, I feel quite stupid right now. I wonder why...

regards
Paulo Mesquita
Portugal

PS  - I'm not blaming anyone but myself. I was stupid and I have to deal with the loss.

[Josh Lake]

Please relax, Paulo!

I definitely understand that you're frustrated, and the issue about documentation has come up quite a bit in these forum threads.

You definitely do NOT have to shell out the $50 (total, by the way, for the whole IP4AP PixInsight series) to learn PixInsight... they might just be helpful.

A motivated user that is willing to experiment could probably teach themselves PI just by reading the tooltips you get when you mouseover different parts of the tools. Several of the tools are documented online extremely well: http://pixinsight.com/doc/tools/ImageIntegration/ImageIntegration.html

For those of us that needed more, there were Harry's great videos (all free): http://www.harrysastroshed.com/pixinsighthome.html

A lot of us learned some great new things from Vicent Peris' YouTube 2 part tutorial, also free: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqhLKIjGMXA&list=PL67AB2FC8F37C35B1&index=2&feature=plpp_video

If there's anything specific you want to learn about, please ask, the members of this forum have been incredibly helpful to me.

No one would agree that PI is a "very simple" program -- it has many parts, many tools, and a huge amount of functionality. We do not use it for its simplicity, we use it for its power. The power requires complexity and a human touch, where one method of processing is not best for every image.

If you have a PI license, that's really all you need to pay for. Warren's great tutorials (a real bargain at $50 total for the whole PixInsight series!) would help you get more out of your tools, that's all.

If you were willing to post some of your nice M42 or Horsehead data to the Image Processing Challenge thread, I'm sure you'd find several people who would be willing to try your data and share the workflow. I do this for people often, and I'd be happy to try it with yours. I'll screenshot all of my steps and explain the details of the logic and order I used to get the result.

[pfile]

as i sent to you privately, since the BackyardEOS yahoogroup is not letting me make forum posts from the web right now... warren has no affiliation with pixinsight. please stop implying in public forums that warren and juan are in cahoots somehow and have tricked you into having to spend more money to get the manual.

seriously, log off of the computer, calm down and come back tomorrow. there's no conspiracy here.

[pmesquita]

I know there's  o conspiracy here. And I don't want to offend anyone. Ina d I' sure that Warren's tutorials are all very good from what I saw of one. But I still feel it's very frustrating for someone who is starting to be running around catching loose ends of info here and there and trying to make sense of it all. Many of you will probably work PI with your eyes closed...but I'm a newbie who know how to look for info on basics and I spent more time doing that - a lot more time - than actually processing. God bless Harry and his videos!!! I've seen them at least 15 times each. I've also seen the Youtube videos and I use the mouseover tool.

But there are so many tools and so little info on how to interlace processes...it's very frustrating.

one thing that raised my curiosity: you said the €49 is for the entire series of warrens tutorials? I thought it was just for those on his web page and that more packages were to come at the same price. If I was wrong, my public apologies. And if €49 is what I need to pay...I'll very gladly do so...as you may imagine!!!!

cheers
Paulo

[Josh Lake]

Believe me, Paulo, we've all been newbies at PixInsight at some point (except for Juan et al...). I only started using PI 3 years ago, and I ran into a lot of snags and troubles before getting very good quality results.

What specifically is giving you trouble? There are dozens of processes to choose from, but you really only need about 10 to produce a great image, depending on your data. I think Vicent's video does a great job of showing the full process, and so do a couple of Harry's. What more is it that you are looking for? What do you feel like you are missing?

Also, I just checked IP4AP and it really does look like Warren's tutorial series (with a rolling release, as they are being created even now) will be $50 total. He has several other series about Photoshop and processing in general that are very good, but I think the PI one is the one you'd want. Keep in mind that there are currently only 17 tutorials up, mostly pre-processing and a bit about background extraction.

[marekc]

At the risk of getting into a `PI vs PS' thread, which I know we all want to avoid, I'll point out something in PI's defense:

Although PS is popular with many astro-imagers, it doesn't come with a manual if that's what you're going to do with it. The vast majority of documentation sources for PS are all about terrestrial photography, and don't come with PS by default anyway. So, for astro-imaging with PS, you basically have to buy Ron Wodaski's `New CCD Astronomy' book, Scott Ireland's `Photoshop Astronomy' book, maybe some books or CDs from Jerry Lodriguss, and if you're *very* lucky, you might land a rare copy of Ron's `Astro Zone System' book. (I was one of the lucky ones who got a copy at AIC 2011.) One will probably have bought Berry and Burnell's book, too.

Then, there are other video tutorial series, such as... Warren's, for one. Plus those by Adam Block and others.

In the end, I'd argue that if one doesn't know much about PS, and one starts using it seriously as an astro-imager, it requires as much of an investment in `outside learning materials' as PI.

- Marek

[Geoff]

Well said Marek. I think many people who complain about the "difficulty" of PI compared with PS forget how non obvious PS was when they opened it up for the first time and how much of a learning curve they faced before managing to do a reasonable job of processing.
Geoff

[Eddy Timmermans]

The same for me. I've been using PS before PI and also had to search the internet for tutorials and books on astrophotographic image processing.
When I switched to PI some 5 months ago, I immediately browsed the forums and Harry's videos.
I very quickly was able to produce decent results, not fantastic, but decent. Then, step by step, I learned some other tools, LCE, ACDNR,etc and was able to improve my "processing skills". Not like the experts and gurus, but nevertheless. I never felt that I was "on my own".
Even the stacking worked fine within a week ! It took that long because my data was not that great. The result was that I spent more time taking polar aligning.

Eddy

[RBA]

As it's been said, Warren's tutorials are not $50 a piece, but $50 minus-one-cent for the whole series. 

I was worried this point wasn't well made in the IP4P page about the PixInsight series, but I just checked and right above where the price is mentioned, the web page states:

Your purchase will give you access to new tutorials as they are released.

And I think that's easily understood.

I know my opinion can be measured as having a "conflict of interests", but regardless, looking at what others charge for their Photoshop tutorials for astroimage processing, I think Warren's price is actually quite reasonable. And of course, there's the free route, many of us know well and have enjoyed it rather than suffered it.

So whatever works for you, but please pay attention to these - and possibly other - details.. Talking about a product as if it costs $500 when it really costs $50 is a big deal.