How I Improved My Narrowband Workflow in 2023: A Breakdown of My Process

In this video, I'll share with you how I improved my narrowband workflow in 2023 using PixInsight. I'll give you a step-by-step breakdown of my process and show you how I streamlined my workflow for maximum efficiency. I’ll demonstrate how the RC Astro suite as well as my own Foraxx Palette Utility script have helped me achieve better results in less time.
Whether you're a seasoned astrophotographer or fairly new to the game, this video is packed with tips and tricks that you can use to improve your own narrowband workflow.
So, sit back, relax, and get ready to learn how I improved my narrowband workflow with PixInsight in 2023!
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Foraxx Palette Utility Video - • ForaxxPaletteUtility v1
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[@ianhagan7656]

About the wettest day of 2023 here today! A great opportunity to try to master NB colourisation. And a big thankyou to you for the Foraxx Script. A really great tool and a very nice palette. I spent the day on several techniques; Your Foraxx tutorials, Bill Blanshan's SHO and HOO NB colourisation, Entering Into Space Color Masking and Lukamaticos Rainbow Colors. Each method is really good but there is a clear standout!! And the winner is....... FORAXX by a long chalk

[@PaulymanAstro]

That’s great to hear! I’m glad you like the script.

[@sthorn1000]

This was just what I was looking for, you explain what to do in a few simple steps and everything is made clear to me - thank-you :-)

[@haiderbhogadia4829]

Brilliant!! Thank you so very much

[@oishisakana]

the best tutorials I've come across. Thanks.

[@AstroCloudGenerator]

Fabulous!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks Richard.

[@danielviellaris4853]

I find myself always referring back to your content Paulyman. My chances to collect data are far between, so I often forget from my last processing session. Your videos get me amazing results my friend everytime. Thank you!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks Daniel. That’s awesome feedback. Glad I’ve been some help.

[@elbagre71]

Thanks a lot!!! Clear skies forever!

[@elbagre71]

Hello! I want to thank you again for this great video. I have put your suggestions into practice and the difference is noticeable compared to my previous workflow. The work you script does is amazing! I had not been able to achieve colors similar to the majority of the images of the object that I am processing and with your script I was able to achieve it! I had also not been able to highlight the structures of my narrow band images well by applying GHS but you have taught me how to do it well! I only had one small detail with the stars...they almost faded but nothing that I couldn't fix using traditional techniques. I really appreciate the time you've invested in teaching us how to improve our image processing. You've earned a loyal subscriber! Clear skies forever!

[@brianerneststephens]

Great video/tutorial, I'm still in early learning stage but your help and scripts are excellent. Many thanks.

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks Brian.

[@javieralmansa2035]

Awesome tutorial. I processed some of my old data following this workflow and wooow!!!

[@adrianaamez2078]

You are a genius Pauly! I've been following you for a long time with the Friday videos and your work is amazing! I will install your script and it will surely work great! Thank you!!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thank you Adriana. I hope you enjoy the script.

[@adrianaamez2078]

@@PaulymanAstro Awesome Pauly! Now a question: Where does the image come from: Statue A? I can't understand that part to make a kind of zoom

[@starsips]

PaulyMan, can you please do a video showing the setup of CUDA?

[@gregpierens1882]

Yes please

[@marcuswalmsley8445]

Looking forward to running some data again, cheers

[@sochin33]

This is a very excellent tutorial Paul! Thank you.

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks Dan.

[@marshawilcox]

Thanks!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thank you Marsha!

[@heavyjohnny]

Great breakdown on GHS, Pauly! Thanks for this workflow. I'm going to run some data this way and see if I can get some improvements. Cheers!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks mate.

[@matthewbrown5208]

Awesome vid Pauly, i followed along with some of my own data and that is the best workflow ive used. Thanks so much!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Fantastic Matthew. Glad it helped. Clear skies.

[@3SistersAstroOldAcct-fh3hd]

Absolutely incredible work!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks.

[@giohelp]

Wow ♥amazing, everytime you are working i' m enjoy to listening on you workflow

[@willemwitteveen8374]

Thanks Paul. Great video. The result is fantastic and I learned a lot. Is part 2 of the video only to show the difference with a high end telescope? Otherwise I don't understand the meaning of part 2.

[@RigoFromSpain]

This is really a great image tutorial Pauly !!!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks mate.

[@laidbackobs]

Great work and awesome intro! ;-)

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@jonathanritter7364]

You were recommending updating something to speed up processing times. Sounded like you said "kuda" can you elaborate on that? Your videos are awesome and super helpful. Thank you for all you do.

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks mate. Yes CUDA. If you have an Nvidia graphics card then you can setup CUDA to take advantage of it for some processes such as the XTerminator suite or StarNet2 if you have that. I have a short video on it but I’d say with the latest updates it might be obsolete. I highly recommend Riku Talvio’s blog: rikutalvio.blogspot.com/2023/02/pixinsight-cuda.html?m=1

[@davidf9494]

Another 'stellar' video Pauly. Would you recommend adding SPCC after using your Foraxx Palette Utility? With thanks from Western Canada!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Sorry about the delayed reply. SPCC isn’t recommended with narrowband data. I personally like the stars out of the utility as is.

[@ateiviz]

Great image and really interesting technique. Is there any benefit of stretching the images in mono first before combining please? I'd typically combine and then work on colour balance etc.

[@PaulymanAstro]

I prefer the control I get from stretching the channels independently. However, with the powers of GHS you could absolutely combine first and then work on the channels to colour balance, the colour histograms give some nice feedback to help balancing.

[@petefloydeh7112]

Just sent you a brew mate.. love your tutorials, so easy to follow with just enough explanation so we know why we're doing the steps but doesn't get boring. Quick question, when stretching it's looking great overall but my end image is looking a little flat in the darks/shadow areas. Should I be hitting the bottom off the histogram curve in Log view to make the contrast pop more? Thanks again :)

[@PaulymanAstro]

Yeah that sounds like a good plan. If you can identify where you feel the image is flat then what you will likely see is a hump or humps in that portion of the histogram. You can work on removing the humps with careful choice of symmetry point around the peak of each hump. Small adjustments, possibly even iterative adjustments can give you fine control.

[@fabricelamidey8539]

Absolutely mind blowing image. Can I ask what is your sensor / camera?

[@PaulymanAstro]

I use the ZWO183MM Pro.

[@tonyclark1504]

Thankyou - much appreciated. BTW - I am still unable to access the Foraxx Respository.

[@mickwhitaker4086]

Great image Paul, I noticed your GHS screen didn’t have a preview screen and was a lot smaller than usual, is it a new version. ?

[@xsplendor8075]

Hey Paulyman great video, could take some steps and integrate it in my workflow. Coul'd you please make a video about how to combine a mosaic in Pixinsight in 2023? There is a good Tool PhotometricMosaic but I never really understood it. Would really appreciate a tutorial from you 🙂

[@gregerianne3880]

What a gorgeous image, Paul! I may have missed it, but how many hours of integration did you have on this target? The data is fantastic. Thanks so much for the tutorial! Terrific stuff.

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks Greg. That is 20h of data, spread equally between the three narrowband filters.

[@sHuRuLuNi]

Your image is better than the "house cost" one.

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks!

[@johnhawkes7681]

Superb video Paul and what a cracking image. May I ask what graphics card you use as I need to get CUDA up and running. Thanks.

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks John. I have a GeForce RTX 2070.

[@jonathanpearceff]

Great video as always, Paul. I have studied you GHS ones many times and like that section in this video. I shoot OSC images and have just got my first dual narrowband filter. Would I just need to split the RGB channels to use your tool, and what channels would I use? I have the Askar ColourMagic D1 filter.

[@PaulymanAstro]

Yeah mate just split the channels. Definitely want the red channel and then you could either take the better of the two green/blue channels or add them together into a single channel. Then use the two channel option, use the red channel in the Ha section and the other channel in the Oiii section.

[@jonathanpearceff]

@@PaulymanAstro thanks! I will give that a go (when I actually get some data with the new filter).

[@brandlc]

Great video again Paul! Quick question on the stretching for each S,H,O -what are you aiming for in terms of background and overall brightness of each component before combining? I used to do Linear Fit and then combine each without any stretching and then play with balance later. This way of pre-stretching then combining is different and I wonder what guidelines you have to not overdo it (with GHS or any other stretching process). Cheers!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Sorry for the really late reply Les. For me it’s most important to get the left hand edges of each histogram aligned, that way the background will balance nicely. With GHS that is really easy to achieve. As for the stretching I tend to work the Ha first and get it to where I like it and then stretch the Oiii and Sii pretty heavily to better match the Ha. Often they look terrible as individual images but there only job is to provide RGB colour information, the Ha will provide a nice clean luminance layer.

[@anata5127]

How to get GHS into processes? My Pixinsight doesn’t have it.

[@SPACEJUNKastro]

Yours looks better 🤷‍♂️

[@davidleejenkins]

Beautiful image! I’ve been using your Foraxx Utility to reprocess several of my old images. With some of them, I am getting too much orange (i.e. becomes the dominant colour). Do you have any insight into how to tame the orange so that the dominant colours are red and blue, such as in your image? Thank you!

[@PaulymanAstro]

Thanks David. The script does a hue adjustment and two selective saturation boosts. I tested it on many of my images to find a nice compromise for the adjustments, but of course every image is different so often some tweaks are required. If you use the History Explorer tab and select the Foraxx image you will be able to open the Curves process and see the control points I used. One pulls the reds into the deeper reds and the other affects the oranges and yellows. Playing around with those control points on a live preview should get you where you want, subtle changes are enough they don’t need to be moved much to have a big effect.

[@davidleejenkins]

@@PaulymanAstro that worked! Thank you!

[@SuperNova-py1ec]

Great video thanks. Having run through the workflow I have noticed a big improvement, especially the LocalHistogramEqulization method. I always used that tool but not in the way you demonstrated. One thing I would like to add is that when I ran Star Xterminator with “unscreen” stars selected on a linear image it extracted an image with odd stars. There were small stars that were red / blue but looked more like hot pixels. When I looked at the StarX tool it recommends you do not run Unscreen on linear images. When I ran this on a non-linear image the issue went away, might be my data be worth noting. The Foraxx palette utility is great. Is there any chance of future versions giving you an option to output say an RGB style image or a SHO image etc. I know you have mentioned that you can adjust the curves looking at the history but it would be make the utility even better with an ability to target a particular colour palette. Thanks again for the video!

[@PaulymanAstro]

You are right about the Unscreen option. I have switched to an alternative method of extracting and recombining my stars that I will probably show off in my next processing video. I am looking at some ways to update the tool. Firstly with a preview window and the option to adjust the hue and saturation. But I haven’t written the code yet at least in a functional and stable way.

[@SuperNova-py1ec]

@@PaulymanAstro Thanks. I look forward to the next vid!

[@willemwitteveen8374]

Thanks, I learned a lot. Is it necessary to perform some kind of color calibration or SPCC during the SHO process?

[@PaulymanAstro]

No. In fact the Pix team recommend not to use SPCC for narrowband images.

[@willemwitteveen8374]

Thanks

[@Safestassets]

Just to be clear, the very first step after stacking is crop then DBEE? No LRGB or Linear fit etc.

[@PaulymanAstro]

That’s correct. You could use linear fit in there and could combine the RGB while linear (not using LRGB though, that’s a nonlinear process). I don’t as I like to manually stretch my images using the GHS.

[@victorialoh9921]

I've just finished watching your OSC tutorial video and about to try and process some duo narrowband data. Should I be integrating some of these processes into that workflow?

[@PaulymanAstro]

You most definitely could. Once you have separated your channels, you are basically working a mono workflow.

[@victorialoh9921]

@@PaulymanAstro Thank you for the response. If I'm going to use Foraxx Utility but only have stars for Ha and Oiii (since I've made a third synthetic channel w/o stars) how should I go about this?

[@neverfox]

I'm not sure that I understand the logic behind using merely Ha as the luminance. I understand the motivation that it might be the highest SNR of the three, but if there's any nebulosity that's entirely or primarily coming from SII or OIII emissions, won't it essentially be erased (or weakened) because there's no (or little) corresponding pixel value in the Ha?

[@PaulymanAstro]

Absolutely. There are definitely times where I use a luminance involving all three channels or two of the three. There have been occasions where I have also incorporated some actual luminance when using some high quality data from say Telescope Live in a field that has reflection nebula. I can’t recall if I have demonstrated that in another video or not. I will have a look and if not look at producing one.

[@jakeoppenheimer3647]

Thank you so much for this script. Really helpful for a beginner, what a learning curve its been. What cpu and gpu do you have capable of running the XTerminator family so quickly?

[@PaulymanAstro]

My CPU is a Ryzen 9 3900X and the GPU is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2700. The speed of the XTerminator suite is purely down to having CUDA enabled.

[@jakeoppenheimer3647]

@@PaulymanAstro Thank you. I didn't know that was a thing. Took me a minute to figure it out but now its running super fast. Do you have a tutorial for enabling the CUDA cores in PIxInsight or can I throw a link down here for the one I used?

[@PaulHancock-hx6ci]

@@jakeoppenheimer3647 I do have a short video, but it was more just me giving credit to the fantastic tutorial by Riku Talvio. No problem posting a link to anything that helps others though so fire away.

[@jakeoppenheimer3647]

@@PaulHancock-hx6ci That was exactly who made the tutorial I used, rikutalvio.blogspot.com/2023/02/pixinsight-cuda.html

[@Fedeleallalinea56]

Hello! this method can be use only with l-extreme so with two channels? Thank you

[@PaulymanAstro]

This method is my mono workflow, so using 3 channels. It would work quite nicely with the newer Askar D1-D2 filters. My OSC workflow was designed for dual channel filters.

[@mickwhitaker4086]

Hi Paul, you have GHS as a process not a script, how can I do this, is there an update.

[@PaulymanAstro]

Hi Mick, there is now a GHS process as well as the script. The process is much more responsive and has access to live preview, which is why there is no longer a preview window present. If you add the repository link then PI should automatically update and add the process for you, the script will also still be in the script menu.

[@neverfox]

Why unscreen stars when you're still linear?

[@PaulymanAstro]

Yeah, I have since moved to a different process. I think I had a brain fart with that one.

[@MrPedalpaddle]

Russ Croman suggests BXT after colour calibration, so not on uncombined integrations. @28.00’ kzbin.info/www/bejne/rpO9d4eql8l8iM0

[@PaulymanAstro]

I have seen that. Russ is talking specifically about a OSC workflow perhaps an LRGB workflow where the channels are combined in the linear stage and colour accuracy is important. From what I recall of the interview they didn’t touch on mono narrowband processing, which is a very different beast, especially when you combine channels in the nonlinear stage as I do. We are less concerned with “true” colour in narrowband. If I was processing a OSC narrowband image I would probably follow Russ’s advice and do BXT before I split the channels and worked on them, if anything it saves on labour doing it once.