Pixinsight Tutorial - LRGB Galaxy Processing Workflow - Free Data

[@josephluciani5531]

Luke, no one does a Pixinsight tutorial better than you. No matter how much I progress, your tutorials always provide hidden gems and tips. Do keep up the great work.

[@lukomatico]

You're too kind Joe my friend, as always!! :-D I'm so happy to hear you enjoy them!

[@SAKinDXB]

"in the R....you guessed it. We want to put the Red" - Good one! :)))) Great tutorial, once again!

[@211milkman]

Hi Luke, Fantastic video. You make processing so much easier. Very easy to follow along. I don't know if you have ever tried this before. But you can use BXT as a Sharpening tool as well on your starless image before Recombining the stars back in. It works pretty well by doing this. Open up BXT. Slide the sharpen stars slider to 0.00 Then check the Luminance only box and run the tool. It brings out some more of the details quite well. Especially dust lanes and what not. If it seems too much. You can adjust the Sharpen Nonstellar slider from the default setting of 50 . Downward till you get it where you like it. Also you can run NXT before trying BXT. Just run it anywhere between 35-50. Give it a try and see what you think. Clear skies my friend!!!!

[@frankenstein77777]

Great tip @211milkman. I just applied this to my Horsehead Nebula image and it brought out some lovely extra detail.

[@lukomatico]

Excellent stuff mate, I appreciate you sharing!! All the best and clear skies :-)

[@Nico.75]

Hey Luke, what a great, straightforward tutorial again! May I ask you if it's outdated these days to process L and RGB separately with detail enhancement of the L only and do LRGB combination in nonlinear state? Thank you so much for all you effort. You're such a great "teacher" and I just like to follow and listen to your tutorials with your kind, gentle, honest way of explaining everything!

[@Wgiarc1]

Your workflow tutorials are the best in the business! Thank

[@lukomatico]

Glad you like them mate!! Thanks so much 👍

[@lesgatechair3907]

Hey Luke! Dr.Les from Tampa here. Great lesson! My first LRGB process. New imx533mm in the mail, due tomorrow. Not investing in NoiseX yet but MLT worked well for me. Thx.

[@lukomatico]

Have fun Les!! :-D I hope it gives you lots of enjoyment my friend!

[@marygarcia4544]

Another GREAT tutorial! I always stayed away from the GHS stretch but not anymore. Thanks for ICONS provided i followed along and you really explained in detail the processing steps. I've gone ahead and purchased BlurX, NoiseX, StarX, GraX so very needed and helpful many thanks to you.

[@lukomatico]

Hey there!! - I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed the tutorial, that's absolutely fantastic news! I hope your processing is more fulfilling than ever now you have the RC astro toolkit too 👍 Clear skies to you!!

[@MrPedalpaddle]

Thanks for spending extra time on GHS. Next: HaLRGB please!

[@jimwaters304]

Agreed. Thanks for spending the extra time with GHS.

[@Jcorban08]

Thank you for the outstanding tutorial!! I had no idea how range selection mask tool worked before you demonstrated so clearly here. Much appreciate your work - happy to hear more tutorials are in the pipeline. CS!

[@lukomatico]

You are so welcome!

[@mashpotatomountainobserver3338]

Thanks, Luke you have made processing so much easier for me. Your voice is so calming especially explaining complex subjects. You should do voice overs for audio books.

[@lukomatico]

That's really kind of you to say, my friend!! :-D thanks!

[@astromatt75]

Great video, Luka - found the use of GHS really useful and will be using that in my workflow from now on.

[@lukomatico]

Glad it was helpful mate!! Clear skies 👍👍

[@joedenisco6033]

Luke, That was BRILLIANT! Thank You for SLOWLY stretching this for me. You made it easy to learn from what you did. That was really great. Joe D

[@lukomatico]

Glad you liked it Joe!! Thanks so much mate 👍👍

[@ericwilkes1840]

Great to see another of your brilliant processing videos, thanks as always

[@lukomatico]

Many thanks!

[@Astro_Shed]

Great very useful video again Luke, and well presented… I love the fact that you always reply to comments, which so many tubers of this hobby when there channels get big, don’t bother doing, Kudos for that, I have asked so many questions on yours and other channels and never even get any response from others, but alway know you will respond, and quickly too…👏🏻👏🏻

[@lukomatico]

Ahh you're too kind mate!! I'm so glad you appreciate the comments too, it's really nice that people take the time to leave them! I'll admit it can be a bit overwhelming sometimes when a video does well and you get a lot of comments, but I feel like reading them does help me to learn what people actually enjoy (or not!) about the vids too!! :-D Clear skies to you mate!

[@romaindechamps457]

Thanks Luke, great workflow and fairly straightforward:) I did use GHS on stars also and went back to regular histogram transformation, the difference is significative in the star shape you should give it a try to stretch your star mask with it (from a linear stage)

[@jesuspineiro1622]

Good job Luke. It is a magnificent tutorial. With very simple steps and excellent results. A big hug.

[@lukomatico]

Thanks so much! A big hug back my friend 👍👍

[@seanod42]

Hi Luke great video as always i will download the data to process it in the week i really appreciate that you teach this as i am relatively new to pixinsight and due to living in Cardiff Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 with absolutely terrible weather i haven't had any chance to capture anything for months ahhhh once again thanks mate

[@lukomatico]

Happy to help mate!! So glad you've been getting some use from the downloadable data 👍👍

[@briankotak403]

Awesome Luke! Super helpful. You make this so understandable. Thanks. Dr B from Manitoba, Canada 🇨🇦

[@lukomatico]

Awesome to hear that Dr. B, thank you my friend! :-)

[@philleng480]

Thanks Luke, came at just the right moment when I am having a mare, keep on grinding to a halt, a year of data (and some really fun stuff from the S hemisphere - like LMC, but Graxpert murders that, and Rho Ophiucus, and Carina). Hope I can move on with some of these projects now. Cheers.

[@lukomatico]

Cheers to you my friend!! 👍👍

[@simonpepper5053]

Awesome as always Luke shame about the lack of clear skies we are getting at the moment. Really looking forward to your Askar 120 review too

[@lukomatico]

Hopefully will have the chance to wrap that up soon mate! just need one clear night, haha!

[@stuparker776]

keep them coming Luke these longer processing vids are the best thanks

[@lukomatico]

Thank you so much Stu mate!

[@cdz9400]

Hey Luke! I need to say thank you again because yet again one of your old videos saved my ass.

[@lukomatico]

Thanks so much for watching mate!! :-D

[@pedro4430]

Great tutorial Luke, very simple and well explained. thanks for sharing!

[@lukomatico]

My pleasure! Thank you mate :-D

[@markabbott6223]

Perfect timing for galaxy season Luke! I used your previous tutorials to cut my teeth with emission nebula and a 90mm triplet & 294mm camera. I just got a new F4 newtonian and needed a workflow for galaxies with the latest tools. Many thanks!!! I'm guessing this workflow (minus LRGB combine) would work well with my 533mc OSC camera?

[@lukomatico]

Hey Mark! - so sorry about the late reply, much of this is perfectly transferable to osc processing yeah! However I do have a separate OSC tutorial now for galaxies (I just saw your comment there too!) Thank you for taking the time to comment mate! Clear skies 👍

[@gregerianne3880]

Great tutorial for the beginning of galaxy season, Luke! Thank you. I’ve been trying using STF/HT after darkening the background appropriately, and then using GHS to stretch further where necessary until I’m ready to use Curves Transform. Have you found it best to just use GHS at the very beginning of the stretch? Thanks again!

[@lukomatico]

I do find those first moves to be best made with GHS yeah! At least for my processing tasks so far anyhow :-) Thanks for watching Greg my friend!

[@Tony-Elliott]

Great tutorial Luke thanks for sharing your workflow

[@rtpman1953]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I believe I commented on one of your OSC tutorials that I'd love to see your workflow for LRGB for 2024....and here it is. BTW, I've heard from more than one person that the newer CMOS sensors are to the point where one doesn't need to shoot luminance anymore, simply add more RGB subs. Do you have any thoughts on this?

[@lukomatico]

Hey mate! :-) so glad you liked this! Re: diminished need for L - that's a good question and one I could potentially investigate in a future video!

[@SimonT65]

Excellent little tutorial. Well done Luke

[@lukomatico]

Many thanks!

[@craynerd]

Hi, great tutorial. Followed along just great. Two questions and the most important to me first: what was the point in removing the stars and then returning them to the image. I’m probably being stupid, but I don’t understand what advantage it gave you in the image! 2. I hear amazing things about the exterminator plugins. However after splashing out on the Astro gear and then recently pixinsight, what free alternatives would you recommend for noise, blur and star exterminator - just whilst I save up to buy them?

[@lukomatico]

Hey my friend! Thanks so much for your kind feedback 👍👍 Re: why to remove the stars, good question! You don't really have to do it, but I find sometimes that removing them and stretching the two components of the image individually can help you pull out more detail without blowing stars out 👍 Re: alternatives to the RC astro tools, I think giving the upcoming tool from the graXpert team a go might be worth doing! Or look into the EZ suite for pixinsight, it's still unofficially supported on the forums 👍 Cheers!!

[@ijontichy7179]

Yippee, I'm gonna make another stellar beauty!

[@aorr]

Thank you so much for your tutorials! While I haven't started any of them yet, I notice that your videos start with the LRGB files already stacked and aligned and whatnot. When working with our own data, do you have a tutorial or can you point to one that gets us to that step so we can start working on our own files where this video starts off at? Thanks!

[@lukomatico]

I have some older videos on stacking buried in my channel somewhere mate, sorry I can't be more specific right now though! Clear skies!

[@uschi414]

Thanks for the nice tutorial. Especially because I recently used almost the exact same processing workflow for my image of NGC 2903 and so far it's my favorite galaxy shot yet. I expect you're aware, but at the end you could have left your range mask in place and done a little bit of Local Histogram Equalization to help enhance some of the details in the galaxy. I like to do two passes of the LHE (one with Kernel Radius set for large structures and one with it set for small structures) but reduce the Amount between .2 and .3. Regardless, you got a nice image and there's something to be said for keeping a tutorial from getting into the weeds. :). Thanks again for the video.

[@lukomatico]

Thanks ever so much for taking the time to share!! Clear skies to you my friend 👍👍

[@paulholdsworth2502]

Great tutorial Luke on galaxies. I totally agree on gradient correction vs graxpert. I know most seem to think gradient correction is better but I get more consistent results on graxpert ! I reckon GHS is brilliant for stretching galaxies especially because of the dynamic range usually involved. Anyway mate great video ! I think one pixinsight tutorial that would be kind of fun would be a tutorial/ comparison of a nebula processed entirely at default vs one entirely dialed in ! Those who think pixinsight is too complicated might just see what brilliant results you can get completely default ?

[@lukomatico]

Thank you Paul mate!! That's a cool idea, I'd probably have to brush up my own skills to be able to try and get the most from the tools though for a comparison haha! Hope you're well mate :-)

[@ChuckKozlowski]

This is an excellent tutorial. I really like that you included some raw reference data to work along with your process. I can't wait to use some of these new (to me) techniques on my galaxy images. Do you have a tutorial for emission Nebula available?

[@lukomatico]

Glad you enjoyed it my friend!! I do indeed have tutorials on emission nebula, you'll find them on my channel page just a little further back, more to come in the future though! :-) Clear skies to you Chuck!!

[@HeavenlyBackyardAstronomy]

Thanks, Luke. This tutorial was very helpful.

[@lukomatico]

Thank you ever so much Pat, my friend!

[@abdulthomas1063]

Another well presented tutorial from you Luke. Your tutorials and free data has helped a lot especially with the lack of clear nights past year or so. Keep up the good work. What's the total integration for this project?

[@lukomatico]

Glad to help you my friend!! :-) I'm so happy to hear it's been useful for you! RE: integration, I believe it was around 10 hours total but I can't be 100% accurate on that anymore, my apologies.

[@deep_space_dave]

Great tutorial Luke! That is a really nice image 🙂 So much detail! What camera did you use with your Asprit? I see the pixel size was 2.4um. Thanks!

[@lukomatico]

Hey Dave! It was an asi183mm pro :-) cheers!!

[@dumpydalekobservatory]

Great tutorial mate look forward to catching up in a couple of weeks.

[@lukomatico]

Hope you enjoy! Cheers mate!

[@jimwaters304]

I agree with the others Luke. Another great processing tutorial.

[@lukomatico]

Thanks again!

[@Lx85]

Mate, are you planning to do a post processing contest with the data you shared? your data is amazing

[@lukomatico]

Thank you mate, haha! :-D So glad you liked it! - maybe a contest at some point in the future could be fun, good idea!

[@shubinternet]

Hmm. I think there's a slight audio/video sync mismatch on this post. I hope that gets fixed, because I think this is likely to be a really good video!

[@lukomatico]

Sorry about that mate! It seems to be an issue on some of these uploads lately

[@christakischristaki5036]

Hello Luk.Great tutorial 😊 I have a question 🤔.I tried your tutorial with my lrgb data (m51) and at the step that I combine lrgb, the picture that is produced after stf is green.Why is that.I stack my data with pixinsight.

[@lukomatico]

Hey there my friend! - you may need to click the 'unlinked' stretch icon when using STF :-) (it's the little one that looks like a chain link next to the STF nuke button)

[@catFurrBall]

awesome. thanks, luke

[@miguelmorales9667]

That's nice Luke. Thank You. 👍

[@lukomatico]

Thank you very much my friend!!

[@sathyavenkataraman4061]

Thanks Luke

[@thebst6408]

like 59

[@lukomatico]

Big thanks mate!!

[@mschmalenbach]

Just one question me old mucker! The process icons won't load for me with PixInsight version v1.8.9-2 It works fine on v1.8.9-1. I'm sure I'm being a right plonker and have missed something obvious - if you can shed any light on this I'd be grateful!

[@lukomatico]

Sorry to hear that they aren't loading correctly, you may need to copy them into your pixinsight subfolder directly first as I did have a similar issue after the recent update but doing that fixed it. Good luck! 👍

[@mschmalenbach]

Apologies - I uninstalled everything, rebooted, reinstalled and it all works fantastically!!

[@AmatureAstronomer]

Intreresting.

[@mickwhitaker4086]

Just when you think you have you’re processing zero’d in……………….lol.

[@lukomatico]

Haha! Thanks so much for watching mate :-D

[@danielmead146]

why doesn't my pixinsight have a toolbox menu?

[@lukomatico]

Likely not fully up to date mate? do you have the latest version downloaded from PixInsight themselves, not just the internal update tool

[@WYASPC]

nice job

[@lukomatico]

Thanks!

[@TheReadDesultory]

All these LRGB tutorials seem to start after stacking… where are the tutorials on stacking the raw data first?

[@lukomatico]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/hnSkeX93pdCZm9E That's one of my older videos, possibly out of date now but may still be helpful! I have others for DSS and APP too 👍

[@TheReadDesultory]

@@lukomatico Thanks! I’ve watched that, actually. but isn’t it still OSC? I’m getting prepared to transition to mono. Can’t seem to find any recent tutorial on stacking mono data. Everyone seems to start after stacking. I’m looking for step-by-step from raw data. How to combine the various cal frames with LRGB sets, etc. I feel like I understand WBPP well for OSC. No clue what to do with mono.

[@aorr]

@@TheReadDesultory I'm in the same boat. Hopefully we can get a little pointer here so we can get caught up on this.

[@aorr]

I just found this tutorial which seems to do what we're looking for. The only thing it withholds is saving the stacked and aligned files but we should be able to figure that one out or just leave them open in PixInsight. kzbin.info/www/bejne/nH3YhKKfpdeYfKs

[@Francisco-ch6uf]

Promo sm 🎊

[@Tony-Elliott]

Great tutorial Luke thanks for sharing your workflow

[@lukomatico]

Thank you for your support Tony, as always mate!!