Pix-Insight Practice..

[JohnP]

OK - Been evaluating Pix-Insight over last few weeks & took the opportunity to reprocess (Yes sorry I know a word that should never be said.. ) some of the images I took in France. These are all now correctly calibrated, BIAS, DARKS, FLATS & have had various of the many PI algorithms applied. PI certainly has some features I like but not 100% sure I achieved a lot more with the Reprocess. Its a real fine line between achieving smooth images & pushing too hard in the processing. I am very tempted to get PI & I think if I did colour it would be a real benefit - but once again a massive learning curve. Anyway. images as shown below:-

Cheers, John


Click here for Full Size: http://jpastronomy.co.uk/graphics/OAS/integration1-16x600-cropped%20-%20stretched%20-%20noise%20-%20contrast1.jpg


Click here for Full Size: http://jpastronomy.co.uk/graphics/OAS/Cave_calibrated_16X600secs-cropped-ATW-stretched-contrast-stars-LHE-finish.jpg


Click here for Full Size: http://jpastronomy.co.uk/graphics/OAS/IC405-16X600secs-Calibrated-WS10x10-noise%20AT-crop-LHE-Usharpmask-TGV-final.jpg

[MarkS]

How did you get along with PI?

I consider it to be more of a toolbox than an integrated application.  A very powerful toolbox, yes, but very difficult to get used to at first.

Mark

[JohnP]

Mark, liking it more & more as I play with it - I agree it does have some very nice tools/scripts etc. for enhancing images but also has powerful algorithms for preprocessing & stacking. I like the ease with which you can generate things like star & luminance masks & quickly compare before/ after results and also preview with a number of tools when applying. The software has been written by 'astronomers for astronomers' so for me at least has pretty much everything I need when I process images. The guys that have developed it have obviously got a very mathematical background (like yourself) - one look at the 40 page help file for imageintegration alone (one of the 100's of functions) will put you in statistics heaven..

Anyway - I'll stick with it through the eval period (think I have till mid December) - what to pull up some of my old colour images & try those before I make a decision.

John

[Rocket Pooch]

They look super John, I've been meaning to buy a copy of that for some time, the LRGB stuff is amazing.

[MarkS]

I bought mine a year ago and have just done the (free) upgrade to version 1.8

I'm not using it to its full extent yet, partly because I'm still on Windows XP and it runs out of memory on XP doing a full calibration and stack.  But I am using it more and more for bits of my post-processing.

Mark

[Rocket Pooch]

You really shout upgrade to Windows 7 64 and get a few cores, PI flies on my 6 core PC with 16GB memory.

Mind you AA5 aint slow now.

[JohnP]

Works perfectly on my work laptop as well... nice & fast, Thks,  John

[RobertM]

Beautiful images John, looks like you've done well with PI.  Mind you they were pretty good images to start with

Robert

[JohnP]

Thks Robert - Thinking I may have spent my xmas bonus already (if I get one   ) - John