I have recently downloaded the Pixinsight Trial, and am having some fun/pulling my hair out trying to figure it all out.
I've uploaded two versions of the same data one processed through PS and one through PI, I'm no expert on either but I would like to know if anyone could tell me which version is closer to the true colour of M8 and M20.
The pinkier version is done with PI.
Pixinsight looks like it's a super powerful program once you wrap your head around it. My first thoughts are using a combination of the two would be the best way to go about processing. Cheers
You might want to assign a colour profile to the PS version before anybody tries to make a comparison. The PI image already has a sRGB colour profile.
Either program is perfectly adequate to produce great astro images. I'd recommend playing with both and then deciding suits you best.
PI provides a lot of astro specific tools and is extremely powerful but it doesn't suit everybody. Some people hate the UI and others are put off by all the knobs and levers.
PS is light on astro specific tools, though some are available as plugins and macros, but has fantastic general image processing capabilities. I'd argue that PS is pretty hard to use too but it is well documented and a lot of people are familiar with it already.
You can mix and match and I used to finish off my images in PS. These days I find I can do everything I need in PI.
If you find you are struggling with PI, another option is CCDStack. It is quite easy to use, at least IMHO.
True colour is in the eye of the beholder, dependent in part on the camera spectrum spread and artistic intepretation in processing. My images of that area are close to your second image but processed exclusively in Photoshop. So it would seem either application can produce good results and similiar colour rendition. However, having tried PI and been unable to get my head around it, I prefer PS - I just find it easy. Now with perseverance maybe i'd get there but just can't see the benefit. The PI fans will jump all over this no doubt.
Hi George. The main thing that I would recommend would be to not base a selection decision on the colour of the final image given the control over these parameters from both pieces of software. PI as well as PS have a lot of control over colour saturation. I would argue though that the colour management tools in PI are more suited to astro images with the two main tools being the ColorSaturation process and the colour saturation functionality within the Curves process.
As I have finally made the journey and, as some have said, 'gotten alone with myself and PI' for several months and having made the switch, my advice is that PI has many benefits from the astro imaging perspective. Having said that there are some areas where PS is handy and I will still use this from time to time. An example would be the capability of PS to select very specific areas of an image to work on them. On the other hand, the PI range mask and star mask tools are very (very) powerful tools and make selective processing much easier than PS.
It can be an 'interesting' journey but one of the great things for PI is that there is a great repository of resources prepared by the likes of Harry Page, Warren Keller and many others and these can assist greatly with the learning curve.
I find PIs preprocessing and image analysis tools the winning attributes. PI is much more than a post processing program. You will be purchasing a powerful set of image processing tools.
Like anything you've got to learn to use each of the programs. It just happens that most people know how to use photoshop already. But Pixinsight is cheaper and does everything. It's also really not that hard to learn, though you do have to put aside a fair amount of time to go through tutorials etc.
I use, or try to use, PI and it's a wonderful programme, hard to get your head around at first. It's got the advantage that it is designed with this type of processing in mind.
Pinkier version looks nicer IMO, but it is very difficult to objectivily compare images processed with two different tools unless you replicate each step precisely in both pieces of software.
If you are already proficient with PS then from what I have seen PS can yield wonderful results. I have never used PS until I got into astrophotography, and when starting from scratch, I found PI much more intuitive and easier to use than PS. So for me, since I pretty much exclusively photograph wonders of the night sky, PI was natural choice.
I'm sold once the trial is up I will have to buy PI.
I realise I'm not comparing apples with apples. Perhaps i shouldn't be comparing the two programs as they look to compliment each other rather than compete.
If I had my time over I'd go straight to PI. With PS you will end up spending a lot of money on addins whereas PI has everything you need and is built for astro image processing. There are also some very good free tutorials avaliable now.
