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I will just add my 2 cents worth here as I'm only a bit over a year into processng images.
I started out using CCDSoft to stack and combine RGB. That was only marginally OK. The stacking worked OK most of the time but RGB was a mess and never very successful. Often after a combine the resulting image could not be saved. I posted the problem at Software Bisque and never got a satisfactory answer.
Now, I've never used Pixinsight so this is just rumor and 2nd hand. No doubt it is very good, but it is as deep or deeper than Photoshop and has a most unintuitive interface so I'm told. At the recent AAIC it was discussed quite a bit and was mentioned that one initially just had to religiously follow tutorials to get any result. I have no doubt that one could master it but I really question if one should start with it. An accomplished imager/processor I'm sure could get a result "better" than some other software (maybe), but a beginner...well, I'm doubtful so why make life harder? This hobby is already really hard and quite humbling!
Instead I chose CCDStack and the tutorials by Adam Block. It is pretty intuitive and gives quite good results. There is a free trial and I would really suggest you give it a go before rejecting it. I do all my stacking there and then produce RGB. You can align luminance to the RGB, then move into Photoshop to add the luminance. Since you aligned in CCDStack a simple paste is all that is required. Photoshop is great for finishing images once they are stacked. There are several plugins that help very much such as Noise Ninja and Gradient Exterminator and several others. Once you master masks you will see real results! That is where I found Adam Block's tutorials absolutely indispensable.
Good luck!
Peter
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