Astrophotography PixInsight Galaxy Data Workflow | Triangulum Galaxy | Pt 2

[@SarahMathsAstro]

If you would like to support this channel and follow along in PixInsight with the linear Red, Green, Blue, and Ha master light files, please consider becoming a Patron over on my Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/SarahMathsAstro Thank you!! :)

[@framinash]

Very detailed! Thank you so much for explaining the "behind the scenes" aspects of the process.

[@SarahMathsAstro]

You’re very welcome! Thanks for stopping by :)

[@edmizzimizzi]

Sarah, Thanks very much. I just used your super tutorials to process M33 and M13 for the 2024 Starfest Imaging Salon Contest. I could not have done it without your detailed, expert instructions.🤩

[@SarahMathsAstro]

I am so happy I could help along your journey! If you have them posted anywhere, or would like to send them to me at [e-mail] I would love to see them! Best of luck and thanks so much for letting me know :)

[@ScottDavies]

Excellent video Sarah 😊

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you, Scott! :)

[@lmu6airy]

very well done Sarah, one of the best and most informative pixinsight videos I have seen on youtube 👍🏽

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you, Meshal and thank you for watching. Cheers!

[@GokhanAysg]

I've just started to process images from JWST raw data for use in documentaries on my channel and PixInsight was quite complicated. Now I'm trying to use both NOIRLab Fits Liberator and PixInsight together. Your tutorial helped me a lot about PixInsight, the narration is great and fluent. I look forward to more of your tutorials!

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Very interesting and awesome that you're doing that. I'm glad to hear that this tutorial helped with PixInsight. Cheers!

[@lukomatico]

Great work on these Sarah! - You are helping tons of people :-D (Thanks for the kind shout-out by the way!)

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you, Luke! And thank you again for the great content :)

[@Astrokashyap]

Both tutorial are well detailed. Pixinsight was overwhelming for me when I started. This is gonna help everyone get better at it. You should consider a paid course, you're really good in this.

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thanks, Shrish. My goal is to make PixInsight approachable and to teach others not just the "how to" but the "why" as well.

[@Astrokashyap]

@@SarahMathsAstro yes the "why" is most important bit in science.

[@timburgess1528]

thank you so much! I followed this step by step with my M33 processing, it was very helpful. It was the 1st time that I have separated the luminance at an early stage and processed it separately which was great, thank you!

[@SarahMathsAstro]

I'm so happy to hear that you found this helpful! The separate luminance image (synthetic or from a luminance filter), really is a game changer. Thanks for trying this tutorial out and for the feedback!

[@gerryberard2878]

Very thorough tutorial. Nice job. Thank you.

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you and thank you for stopping by!

[@gregerianne3880]

Amazing tutorial, Sarah, and a beautiful image. Your tutorials are like drinking from a fire hose! Fantastic information -- and another 10 pages in my notebook. 😉 Thank you for all the hard work with these videos. They are incredibly helpful.

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you, Greg! I really appreciate your feedback and support :)

[@DSOImager]

Really nice series Sarah. I liked the way you worked with range masks. I don't usually adjust the lower limit but I can see how that would be useful in certain situations. Great final image.. and cool ambient tunes in the background. CS!

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you, James. I had some trouble with a few stars and their cores that the HSV script wasn't correcting very well for (or just user error with the script...I suspect the issue with some of the stars was from chromatic aberration, though). I did manage to "fix" some of the cores that were funky with the stretch I applied and tried my best not to blow out those cores or do anything further to them with the range mask and lower limit adjustments. Masks are truly wonderful. Hope you've been well!

[@gunnarjensen5910]

😀 At last a pixinsight tutorial with a detailed to-do list. Nice..

[@SarahMathsAstro]

:D helps me keep track of things!

[@tomwoody3651]

I really like your workflow! I know you have notes, at least an outline, but it's really impressive how you just buzz through all this. I worked through on my Andromeda galaxy, severely over cooked it. I'll tun through it again in a few days. I need to finish my notes on video 2.. Again, well done!

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thanks, Tom! That's funny you say that, because believe it or not, it actually takes me quite a bit of time to really figure out a workflow for each data set I process. Even since releasing this video series (part 1 and 2), I would tweak things. I'm curious, at what point do you think the data for Andromeda that you have became a little over processed? Hoping to help. Thanks again!

[@tomwoody3651]

Hey Sarah, Just finished a very abbreviated rework of Andromeda. Looks better but I'll go back and play with it some more. I think on your work flow it was during the TGV denoise and MMT of the RGB file. Detail started to show in the bands and I went nuts with it. Thanks for your help! @@SarahMathsAstro

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thanks for the feedback, Tom. I wish I would have explained those tools a bit more and how they require a lot of dialing in. It can help to create several Preview windows in an image and to test the settings on those. I think I did one or two preview windows for each here, but more could've been better. Looking forward to seeing the images!

[@tomwoody3651]

Thanks Sarah! I'll let you know when I go at it again. @@SarahMathsAstro

[@bofblog]

Great video well presented.., good insite to such a complex program and a target superb image...

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you, Les. I appreciate the feedback!

[@Thommy78]

Very well done. Learned a lot. Thx.

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Awesome, really glad to hear that. Cheers.

[@Spaced_Out_Bill]

Thank you for your hard work making these videos. Your instructions are very clear and easy to follow. I love your style of teaching! I would love to see how you use the Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch tool. KZbin seems to only have a few tutorials using an outdated version of GHS. 😊

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you, Bill! I appreciate the feedback and support. I’ll add the GHS video to my list.

[@jasonadrian6201]

I'm collecting Ha on M63 right now.. looking forward to trying this combination method out in the next few days. Really great tutorial!

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Oh man, M63 is such an epic galaxy. Very exciting! Thank you also for the kind words. Wishing you lots of clear skies for that Ha :)

[@mirkotondinelli8526]

Hi Sarah. Very good finished now to see the 2 part. Interesting parts of the Stretch. I didn't know the pixelmath method. Nor the star reduction ... I usually do with Photoshop. Visible dark I follow him too ... he's good. Even the ha_rgb fusion I do similar but your method keeps the sky background more uniform. I have to create a mask for the sky background.👏👏👏👏

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Hi Mirko, just wanted to reiterate thank you for checking the videos out and for your insight as always!

[@mirkotondinelli8526]

@@SarahMathsAstro 😊😊

[@scotianskies]

Awesome videos Sarah! I'm almost tempted to try PI! a video like this to show your workflow with OSC/OSC+Ha in PI would be great to see. As well as same but with Siril. (i started trying that after 1st watching your Star Tracker Video.) Thanks!

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you and thanks for taking the time to watch. My hope with this video series is that it can work for both monochrome and OSC/OSC+Ha data in PI. I also hope to make more SiriL tutorials, too. Thanks again!

[@sethjchandler]

This is a heroic effort to cover software, whose sensible use, requires a fairly sophisticated understanding of both photo editing and astronomy. I have a suggestion for future videos, and I make this out of respect because I think you’re actually one of the very best KZbinrs in this field and do make an effort to try and explain things clearly. I think you need to be more conceptual in your presentation and discuss why you are doing certain things in more depth. The problem with the video is that unless the image is exactly similar to yours, it’s difficult to know how to adapt your workflow to a particular image, so for example, in deconvolution segment, there are probably eight or 10 parameters that you filddled with. Do you say to try and learn by experimentation but with that large a parameter space it’s really hard to go to the better choices unless you have a conceptual understanding about how the parameters interact. I recognize that my request for more of a conceptual presentation would add length to what is already a very lengthy and very detailed video and perhaps others in this field understand why’s better than I do. Anyway, please don’t let this criticism detract from my sense of appreciation for a video that I suspect will benefit many, and that clearly represents a very high level of experience and understanding. Thanks.

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Hi Seth, thanks for the taking the time to watch the video and provide such thoughtful feedback. I'll take everything you mentioned into consideration for my future processing tutorials. Thanks again.

[@duckwarrior8489]

Thanks Sarah, it was not clear to me how to blend my Ha-data into LRGB-images. Your video was really helpful in explaining me how to do this. CS Jan

[@SarahMathsAstro]

I’m very happy to hear that this video helped to clarify how to combine the data sets. Thanks for stopping by! Cheers :)

[@Stefan1368]

A wonderful tutorial. Honestly how long did it take you to learn pixinsight with confidence? I've been astrophotography imaging for years and only ever used Photoshop, so making the upgrade to pix insight looks daunting. Truly you are are the Queen of pixinsight! Cheers

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you for your kind words. Honestly, I’m always learning something new with PixInsight or refining what I knew before. But I think I became more confident with it after 6 months to a year of constant use of it. I’m still learning so much with PS too though. Both are so powerful!

[@kerrygreen9064]

Great series! I just stumbled upon this and wish I’d found your channel sooner. I see that you didn’t use NoiseXTerminator in this series and stuck to traditional noise reduction methods. Did you do this for sake of demonstration or do you prefer the control the traditional methods give you at the different scales?

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you, Kerry! I stuck to traditional noise reduction methods because it's a third party application that costs money and I know it's not always the most accessible for others out there so I try to provide methods that are native to PixInsight's processes and existing tools. I do use NoiseXTerminator on my own as well as the traditional methods. So, overall, it's more about economic accessibility.

[@johnsmith-rd9rr]

In the early part of this video, you show a chart for the workflow. Do you have a downloadable version of this and/or one for other workflows like globular clusters and OSC data?

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Hey there, you can download the chart from this Google Drive link here: drive.google.com/file/d/1dmnh2ZYlPsWzc2D9HSC90OyKaqdrTmVF/view?usp=sharing At the moment, this is the only written workflow I have like this.

[@stevenwilliams6258]

What is your view on monitors for Astrophotography as a hobby? With an ASI2600MC camera with about 6K resolution, would I need a 6K monitor to see the results and to edit accurately? Or, I suppose with a cropped image, perhaps 5K remains(?). Only a Dell is in a $2000 region with 6K resolution. There are lots of sub $1000 4K monitors. Of course, my monitor has 2K resolution. And wants: black (OLED), resolution, size and brightness (nits). Thanks!

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Having a beefy monitor with lots of resolution is good, 4K will be great - that's what I usually run on. 6K would be great of course, too. But I don't think most amateurs photographers have that kind of monitor. I think what's also important is the color calibration and having a monitor that can be calibrated with high accuracy so that you can ensure color consistency across different mediums (digital and printed ). BenQ or EIZO, for example, make some excellent ones. They are expensive though. You can also get some tools to help calibrate the monitor you may already have, like the Datacolor Spyder series. But yeah, Dell does have some great monitors like the Dell U4025QW. The ASUS ProArt Display PA279CRV would be another option.

[@davidcocklin2109]

One day can you do a video of you setting up and doing images. How you do them on the canera.

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Sure! That's a great idea.

[@giohelp]

Thankyou very much

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Most welcome

[@frankinblackpool]

Hello, from time to time I dabble in very basic astronomy photography with maybe one or two attempts a year. I have a Micro four thirds camera, which isn’t ideal however I have fast glass to almost compensate. May I ask if you use any image editing software that IS NOT from Adobe such as Luminar or Photolabs DxO. These are my weapons of choice for when the Sun comes out to play with bog standard daytime stuff. Or would you recommend specific software for Astro work, please? My dream goal is to do a day to night Time Lapse of the Milky Way.

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Hello, for Milky Way time lapses, I tend to use some of the softwares you listed as well as Sequator and LRTimelapse. Hope this helps! Cheers

[@frankinblackpool]

@@SarahMathsAstro Good evening and thank you so much for replying. Putting aside the Time Lapse project and editing those images, do you use any software to edit Milky Way shots or objects such as Andromeda which do not include anything form Adobe and their evil empire of renting software? Me no likey renting software. However I am happy to pay for software if it does the job. For example I use Davinci Resolve, the paid version, to edit my Time Lapse projects. Resolve has a feature to reduce or remove flickering that can happen in Time Lapse projects, much in the same way that LRTimelapse can do this as well. I was going to try LRTimelapse but I needed to use Adobe software as well, which I did not want to do. I also have had good results with Sequator. However my biggest Light Bulb moment was understanding SNR and exposing the image correctly. This may seem silly for somebody that's been holding a camera for a few decades, but night time photography has a whole different mindset and skills. Or I like to kid myself into thinking. Cheers

[@frankinblackpool]

@@SarahMathsAstro May I ask if you've ever done a Holy Grail Time Lapse of day to night time? If you have would you be willing to tell me how you set up your camera please. At the moment I have my camera in Aperture Priority with ISO set to Auto. I limit the ISO to a maximum of 800 in the hope that it will increase exposure time. It all starts well with a shutter speed of 1/320th of a second but in darkness that shutter only drops to 1/2 a second. This ain't very good. However if I set my camera to Aperture Priority and use somewhere between the 500 Rule mixed with the NPF Rule then I get very well exposed images with a shutter speed of 20 to 30 seconds depending on my lens. I can't work out where I'm going wrong. Unless there is no short cut and I have to stand by the camera and manually adjust shutter speed as the light changes?

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Gotcha! Well, my go-to for editing images of the Andromeda Galaxy is PixInsight. A one-time purchase cost of 300.00 Euros (about $285 USD, depending on the exchange rate). It's quite robust and I use it for all processing steps; from pre-processing (calibration, registration, stacking, gradient removal, color calibration, noise reduction, stretching) to post-processing (levels/ curves/ hues adjustments, etc.). For editing a single Milk Way shot, it may be a bit overkill, but since I have it, I use it. But if you're looking for something like Photoshop or Lightroom to edit single Milky Way shots, then I recommend checking out GIMP. It's a free software that has the same feel/ toolset as Photoshop. Siril is also free and a great choice for all around astro image processing needs (from pre- to post- processing). Also, the realization doesn't seem silly at all. Like you said, night photography is a whole other mindset/ skillset from daytime photography. It's awesome that you do both! Cheers

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Sadly, I haven't done a holy grail day to night time lapse. I've done timelapses for lunar and solar eclipses that required a lot of manual adjustments of exposure settings, but that's about the extent of when I do more intricate/ demanding timelapses. So yeah, at least with variable exposure environments/ subjects like eclipses, I personally have found that manual adjustments are best. But, again, I'm not a timelapse pro. I apologize!

[@stephencollins9408]

I love how she teaches she is amazing to learn from 😂😂😂

[@SarahMathsAstro]

That means so much, thank you!

[@pera_detlic]

Really nice series Sarah.sub and like

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Thank you!

[@pera_detlic]

@@SarahMathsAstro can you give feedback

[@jamesak4454]

Hello from Czech Republic

[@SarahMathsAstro]

Hello!

[@alexanderthegreat3106]

Hello you have any experience with the zwo asi 294 pro colour camera cooled ?

[@SarahMathsAstro]

No, I've never used one before.