Workshops 

After a night of catching photons, you can hardly wait to see and share the cosmic beauty of your photographs! While many options for deep-sky image processing software exist, none can match PixInsight for its versatility. As a very powerful program, the learning curve can seem daunting to the new user, but we’d like to show you that it’s not! In this workshop, we’ll take the mystery out of PixInsight, and show you how to produce pleasing results in just a few, simple steps.

This is a continuation of our PixInsight for Newbies workshop. Now that you have begun to harness PixInsight’s powerful toolkit, it’s time to take it up a notch. In “Next Steps for Newbies”, Ron and Warren will expand on the basic workflow with the following powerful tools and techniques for both One-shot Color (OSC) and Monochrome cameras.

This workshop covers the various settings available to optimize MultiscaleLinearTransform for noise reduction of linear images, SCNR for color images, and TGVDenoise for nonlinear images.

In this workshop, Ron and Warren will explore several methods for pulling detail from your deep sky image. We’ll cover deconvolution and sharpening, along with tools for getting the most from high-dynamic-range images. We'll also explore processes and scripts for selectively enhancing structures in images.

Our final installment of the Newbie workshop series reveals the full power of including masks to add fine control to your processing workflow.

In this intermediate workshop, Ron and Warren will show you how to get the most from your data sets by taking advantage of PixInsight’s many tools for combining images.

Have you ever wanted to image a deep-sky object that was larger than your camera’s field of view? In this intermediate workshop, Ron and Warren will show you how to stitch multiple panes together to make a seamless mosaic of a larger region.

In this intermediate workshop, Ron and Warren will show you how to get the most from your narrowband data sets, with or without broadband color.

We opened the floor up to you! Ask us anything. Based on the requests we received, we’ve pulled a few common threads together to cover.

Watch Warren work his magic on a set of monochrome LRGB masters, taking it through linear and non-linear processing, ending with a jpg he’d be proud to share with friends or online.

This time out we'll see Ron work his magic on a One Shot Color data set, taking it through linear and non-linear processing, ending with a jpg he’d be proud to share with friends or online.

Warren will work his magic on an image of the Corona nebula captured with a One-Shot Color (OSC) camera, taking it through linear and non-linear processing, ending with a JPEG he’d be proud to share online or with friends.

Ron will combine luminance from a mono camera with one-shot color data from a separate telescope to make a beautiful deep-sky portrait of M33.

Warren will work his magic on a monochromatic LRGB set of the Horsehead and Flame nebulae, taking it through linear and non-linear processing, finishing with a JPEG he’d be proud to share online or with friends.

In Photons to Photos #6, you'll look over Ron's shoulder while he processes a monochrome LRGB data set from scratch. The subjects are two iconic springtime galaxies that are well-placed for northern imagers in March and April: the Whale and the Hockey Stick. Ron will start with monochrome L, R, G and B masters and finish with a JPEG that's ready to share on the web.

M13 is arguably the finest globular cluster in the northern hemisphere, and is well placed for imaging in the late spring and early summer. In Photons to Photos #7 you can watch over Warren's shoulder as he processes a One-Shot Color image of the Hercules cluster from start to finish.

M101 lies off the handle of the Big Dipper. This beautiful grand-design spiral galaxy is well placed in the northern sky all night long in late spring and early summer. In this workshop Ron will blend luminance- and Ha-filtered masters from his mono camera and 6” scope with one-shot color data from his 4” refractor to capture the essence of this object. This workshop will include demos of some recent enhancements to PI and the latest add-ons, including NoiseXterminator.