PixInsight

PixInsight is some of the best money I have spent on software for astrophotography. Its scientific and methodical approach to image editing might seem constraining at first, but very soon you get accustomed to it.

It's got some amazing tools, like DynamicBackgroundExtraction to fix gradient, a great noise reduction algorithm, and wonderful tools for wavelet processing.

The ability to save Process icons helps a lot with achieving consistent results.

In my opinion, PixInsight is absolutely the best software to process deep sky imagery.

Highly recommended!

The best software to process!!

I'm a PixInsight user since the first version, and for me is the best software to process.

Excellent software!

Definitely agree with the review. It also has dedicated developers and frequent updates with either new features (mostly) or a bug fixes.

It is quite versatile. A bit of a challenge to get used to the GUI which is sometimes not intuitive. But this can be overcome and features and ability more than make up for it.

By far the best way to process your astro-photos from start to finish. Interface will be odd at first but once you get used to it you'll find it's clearly superior to Photoshop and the like.

the best

I use Maxim for acquisition (a great software package for this purpose) and after that it's PI all the way. I never once went back to any other processing software once I had bought PI, except for some printing colour management in PhotoShop, but now I've learned how to do this in PixInsight. It's by far and away the best and easiest package to use once you've got used to it. My use of the word "easy" is relative. Any decent software package is going to be a challenge to learn. My only gripe about PI is the lack of documentation. This is easy enough to work through, but the quality of the documentation that is there leaves me wishing for more.
Geoff

The best!!!!

Hello!

For peoples who speaks french like me, here's a good tutorial on the Astro's Quebec web site : http://www.astro-quebec.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=8614

Lucas

highly recommended

I know that this is preaching to the choir, but I respectfully take issue with the folks that complain about PixInsight’s GUI design and lack of documentation.
I started out about 7 years ago with my first 300D images processed in Registax. Nothing intuitive about the software, but I found a tutorial on the web that walked me through it.
I then stumbled across Jim Solomon’s brilliant Cookbook for Iris. This software was structured like nothing I had seen before. But it was free (same as Registax) and with Jim’s guidance; I was able to produce images that liked me. The final tweaks required Photo Shop, so I used my Elements copy for that. Thinking that Elements was simply not getting it done, I bought a copy of Paint Shop Pro, and have since dabbled in Gimp. Now these are three GUIs that I found impossible to penetrate. In fairness, I had never used them before.
Again thinking that my images deserved better treatment, last year I looked into buying the full copy of Photo Shop. I had also seen a number of references to PixInsight (mostly on Cloudy Nights forum, and mostly good). While PS was limited to post processing, PI was a full service software. Also the price for PI was substantially less than PS. So I got my trial version and gave it a go.

I found the PixInsight GUI no weirder than the PS, nor my earlier softwares. Initially, I needed hand holding for all of them. But what I did find were lots of tutorials for PixInsight. This included their web site material and videos (sometimes difficult to follow), Harry’s videos (brilliant), and miscellaneous others. Their forum is a powerful tool and even their built in “help” system is slowly growing.
My first few days with the software were spent watching the videos and building my own recipe cookbook. Once done, I was able to process quickly and (mostly) to my satisfaction. My technique was to save the PI file after each step with that operation’s abbreviation in the file name. By the time I finished, the file name was quite long, but that’s OK. I then would use a previous file as my guideline when processing a new image. Now the cookbook rarely gets drug out.
The lack of experience with Photo Shop allowed me to approach PI with an open mind and no prejudices. And I find there to be a wealth of processing help on the web. Just consider the internet as your index.

a comprehensive program, thanks to pixinsight are able to process images in spite of the high degree of light pollution which dominates the place where I live

I have been a Pixinsight user for ~3 years. It was the only sophisticated astro image program that I could get to work on Linux without resorting to Wine, CrossOver or Virtual Box. At the time I was new to astrophotography and cut my teeth on Pixinsight, including the manual image calibration procedure, now automated, without any documentation at all. A very steep climb indeed for a newbie, but it's not as difficult as first appears.

I have heard all sorts of +ve and -ve comments about PI, but when it all boils down to it, opinions are really a matter of preference.

I like Pixinsight, because I know it and it is really very good, when used as designed.

I wanted to have a software that will run on a osx system and not cost more than my macbook!

You can find a lot of great tutorials and videos showing a step by step processing and techniques that makes Pixinsight easy to learn and use software in a very sort time.

Pixinsight is the perfect software for astrophotography!
It is multi-platform, low priced, continuous updates with new or improved tools, easy to learn with a lot of tutorials and support.