OSC to Hubble - PixInsight Processing Workflow/Tutorial

[@lukomatico]

When you come to stretch your data, as David Stearn commented below you may wish to try unlinked stretching! My advice would be to create a clone of your image right before stretching, stretch one linked, the other unlinked, then try NN on both - continue to process the one that you like best, close the other! 👍 Clear skies!

[@rameshtahlan]

I am now finally following only your Pixinsight Processing, and I am totally enjoying it. In fact after I posted one on fb, got a really good comment from the guy who taught me how to do all the spade work and install Scripts. Hats off to him, cause he sure had some patience for a 72 year old like me, a Dummy frankly, had to be spoon fed every time by him. Now totally enjoying processing. And all thank to you, as I found your video tutorial that clicked with me. Now I am trying to figure out how to process Galaxies, hope you have a similar simple way to process any Galaxy. I am not aiming for olympic medal, but that my friends on fb, fell that it is wow... Hahaha.

[@lukomatico]

Hey there my friend! It's so encouraging to hear you've found these videos useful, that's wonderful news indeed!! Thank you for taking the time to share a little of your story and for leaving such a positive message! All the very best, Luke

[@timbotron4000]

This is probably the easiest to follow tutorial on how to do this. I just used this method to process my data of Sh2-171 that I really wasn't happy with in the usual dual narrowband look. Thanks Luko for the great video!

[@lukomatico]

Thanks so much for watching mate!! I'm really glad to hear it was useful! :-)

[@davidclayton5218]

I found this so useful, your relaxed presentation style without any patronizing is so refreshing. Pix can be very inhibiting to start with but by your simplification makes it much more accessible. Thanks and keep up the good work.

[@lukomatico]

That's lovely to hear mate!! Thank you so much for that uplifting message :-) Clear skies!!

[@MentalWhiplash]

I've used this 3 times and can't begin to express how much better I process images now. Digging into the scripts to better understand the techniques has been a treasure. Thanks! If you ever venture into making tri-bahtinov I'll grab every size from 6 to 11!

[@lukomatico]

Ever so happy to hear this has been useful for you my friend!! Clear skies! :-D

[@billblanshan3021]

Excellent job Luke! Your processing skills are second to none.

[@lukomatico]

You're too kind Bill my friend!! 👍👍

[@w8bya]

Nice to wake up this morning and see another fine processing video from you Luke. They have helped me tons and each time I watch one I learn something new. I did not notice you mention which engine in BXT you picked (V2 or V4) and also if the elongated stars in the corners got fixed but I suspect they did. Thanks for sharing !

[@lukomatico]

Hey mate! :-) Thanks so much for your lovely comment! - RE which AI, it'll be V4 for certain, and the stars were indeed fixed by bxt, what a great tool!! Clear skies my friend

[@aaronmiller8098]

My sincere thanks for this workflow, sir. This makes everything so much more enjoyable. Thankfully I already owned everything I needed to, and that Narrowband Normalization is a gamechanger!

[@lukomatico]

Great to hear that mate!!

[@DarkEnergyStudios]

Just a pleasant and very useful presentation! I learned so much about PI. Thank you!

[@lukomatico]

So glad to hear that! Thanks mate and clear skies :-)

[@robinhoward6447]

This is definitely something to aim for over the summer - if the weather improves in Yorkshire! Thanks for a brilliant video, Luke. Your channel always gives me the kick I need to try and improve my skills. Clear skies.

[@lukomatico]

Glad you enjoyed it Robin!! Thanks so much for your kind message!

[@Spaced_Out_Bill]

Hey Luke, this is so cool! I used this technique on my Forsaken Nebula data and it came out really good! Thanks for your hard work making these videos

[@SpaceCityAstro]

One tip about BlurXT - if you run it twice - once with the 'correct only' box ticked, that'll get rid of the chromatic abberation and misshapen stars. Then untick that box and run it a second time like you normally would. Then your stars will be much cleaner.

[@lukomatico]

Cheers mate! - I think the need to do this has gone with the current AI version though, worth testing both ways to be sure! :-) Clear skies!

[@garyrear]

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this Luk. I will be sure to give this a try on my data

[@lukomatico]

Have fun my friend!! :-D

[@Dudleydogg]

I have to say even though im working on different Targets all these methods apply, this is great and I really appreciate your pre done process Icons, I have made some epic advances in my processing over the years. Its amazing what you can do with a MC camera but I do miss that Ha data :-)

[@lukomatico]

Great to hear that mate!! Thank you for sharing :-D

[@petesastrophotography]

Excellent stuff Luke. Nice to have some more data to play with, I've been processing a lot of other peoples data recently and it's drastically changed the way I process images (for the better) as there's always something new to learn and deal with.

[@lukomatico]

Thank you Pete!! - I totally hear that, new challenges sharpen skills, 100%! :-)

[@Wombatzone31]

ok mate, that totally rocked! It has greatly enhanced my Cat's Paw Nebula shot. Brings out so much detail on a nebula that was HA dominent. Thanks once again. Have shared to you in IG

[@lukomatico]

Thanks mate!! glad to hear it worked :-)

[@johannesofner2954]

Fantastic tutorial Luke! You help me tremendous to reach the next steps in processing. Also cool and calm voice.👍

[@lukomatico]

So wonderful to hear that!! Thanks so much for your kind message mate :-)

[@stuparker776]

BXT is the most important software I have ever purchased its a must-have

[@lukomatico]

100% agreed!!

[@ZBOYDMARK]

Great tutorial Luke, really clear and easy to follow, thanks for sharing your skills 👍

[@lukomatico]

My pleasure mate!! thanks for watching! :-D

[@deep_space_dave]

Luke your results actually look better than using the usual SHO processing! I like this as I would only need a good dual band filter to collect the data needed in less precious imaging time. Thanks for this as I now have another great tool in my processing toolbox!

[@lukomatico]

Wow, thanks so much for the lovely comment Dave mate!! :-) you're too kind!

[@SimonsAstro]

Great work Luke! Thanks for the data mate as I’m just not getting any data myself lately! Weather has been absolute crap🤦‍♂️ Great tutorial mate👍 Clear skies!

[@lukomatico]

Sorry to hear that Simon mate!! it's been a weird one hasn't it, aside from the occasional short clear spell it's been very dreary! Hoping for better skies for you soon buddy!

[@waynespurling3668]

Great tutorial bud, very helpful and intuitive!

[@FrancoGrimoldi]

It looks awesome, Luke, thanks so much for this tutorial!

[@lukomatico]

No problem! Thank you for your support my friend! :-)

[@AlexN-Astro]

Awesome as usual, I've been using your previous osc to hubble tutorial to work with my images from my Artemis C pro and Askar d1 6nm dual narrowband filter with varying results. I have a form of colour blindness that makes processing astro images really complicated in broadband, but in narrowband you can't really be wrong, as it's all artists interpretation of the data... Got my Bahtinov mask from your ebay store the other day and resolved an issue I was having with my oag and main cameras focus being slightly out, guiding was much improved as a result, so thank you for that!

[@lukomatico]

Brilliant to hear that my friend!! Clear skies to you :-D

[@seanod42]

Hi Luke yet again your video is excellent i agree about blur, noise, star exterminator are the best available thanks for the data to follow along congrats about the baby mate

[@lukomatico]

Thanks so much Sean mate!! :-D

[@Tony-Elliott]

Hi luke great tutorial mate you make it look so easy, thanks for taking the time to make these video

[@lukomatico]

My pleasure! Thanks for watching Tony mate! :-)

[@markosullivan6444]

Thank you so much for this! I've just reprocessed one of my images and it looks as if it was taken by someone better than me!

[@lukomatico]

Glad it helped Mark!! That's superb 👍👍

[@stuparker776]

You hit the mark again Luke Cheers

[@lukomatico]

Thanks Stu mate!! Cheers!

[@guisaldanha]

Very good! Could you explain further the formulas for the color masks and mask blur?

[@lukomatico]

Thanks mate! Bill would be the guy to ask about the specific formulae though! 👍

[@IronMan-2024]

Great video as always! Going to try it on my first narrowband capture ever of the Eagle nebula! I was doing some testing and didn’t expect to be able to capture any data just seeing if I could get focus and stuff like that. I didn’t even polar align. Somehow my guiding was 0.7 arcsec so I just picked a target from the sky atlas in NINA and left it overnight. Using L-ultimate and 4 min subs I got 3 hours of data. I was shocked to see the images! Never seen that many stars before since I was doing broadband from Bortle 8/9 skies.

[@matadorbeagles1120]

Thanks. I used you previous workflow last week. Need to see what tweaks you have made so I can go back and re-process.

[@lukomatico]

Thank you!! Hope you enjoy :-)

[@glennvanrooij5571]

Great video, thanks from Holland

[@lukomatico]

Thanks for watching mate!! 👍👍

[@peterau705]

Hi Luke, when I copy over the scripts the narrowband normalization (+others) are renamed or something. Is NBN now SHO and HOO and HSO normalization?

[@lukomatico]

Hi mate, it could be overwriting and automatically renaming duplicate icons by the sound of it? I'd try loading in the new icon set once, hit 'arrange all icons' then see if everything is ok at that point 👍

[@peterau705]

Hey Luke, thanks for the reply. That is exactly what is happening. I loaded on a empty project and rearranged and same thing happens. It is renaming them and seperating them into SHO and HOO. Any other ideas? By the way your videos up my game of PI. They are the best of all teh tutorials!

[@johnjohnston4298]

Hi Luke, another great video. Daft question, which I know that you have answered before but I can't remember! How do you get V3 of the process icons to show in PI. No problem with V2.

[@johnjohnston4298]

Apologies - Jumped the intro!

[@lukomatico]

Glad to hear it's sorted mate!! 👍👍

[@FrootyRecords]

Great result Luke!. As its so nice, I would have definitely tried doing some clone stamping touch up around that bad halo star when you had the stars removed. I think it detracts quite a lot from what is otherwise, a very beautiful image. Just my opinion.

[@lukomatico]

Thanks for the feedback Dave mate!! I don't like halos at all, but it'd have felt a little naughty to try and hide it I reckon haha, hence just 'acceptance' being my strategy at the moment 😂 All the best! 👍👍

[@ABCMO-bl5pi]

Luke, thank you for creating this valuable video. A question I have concerns screening. As you did in the video, I use the “unscreen” option in StarXterminator and then rescreen the stars when I put them back into the starless image. However, I don’t know what “screening” is and I haven’t found an explanation online. Any chance you could provide a brief explanation?

[@lukomatico]

Hey there my friend! screening is an option to allow you to remove and reinsert the stars less destructively than pure addition does - addition does just that, adds the starless + stars together, inevitably leading to bright spots & burnout where stars are reintegrated to the already bright image, rescreening is more akin to a gentle blend, helping preserve highlights - Hope that helps!

[@ABCMO-bl5pi]

@@lukomaticoThank you. That helps a lot.

[@dumpydalekobservatory]

Great work mate looks like the weather has turned to crap again though so who knows when we'll be out collecting photons

[@lukomatico]

Oh mate fingers crossed it won't be long again, jeez it's been a weird year!

[@michaelverolini2290]

Trying to follow this video with the data. With Graxpert it says "You must setup the path to GraXpert first using the wrench icon!" not sure what to do after I click on the wrench. Wondering if you could help me out with this.? Thanks

[@lukomatico]

Hey mate! IIRC, you'll need to click the wrench, click the box/button to select the location, then using the on-screen navigation find your graXpert file 👍 Hope that helps!

[@michaelverolini2290]

@@lukomatico thanks for your response. I'm still stuck trying to get GraXpert to work. I'm now getting this error message when I try to run the script in PixInsight *** Error [001]: /Applications/PixInsight/src/scripts/Toolbox/GraXpertLib.jsh, line 113: ReferenceError: setGraXpertDefaults is not defined

[@Chris-fr2kq]

Hi Luke, when I try to load your process icons the NBN throws an error every time and won't load. Going to try an earlier version if I can find one.

[@lukomatico]

You'll need to make sure it's installed at the repository location mate 👍 it won't directly install from my icons

[@Chris-fr2kq]

Yes, I updated PixInsight to the latest version and lost a few repositories for some reason, Bill's stuff amongst them. All sorted now thanks.

[@Astro_Shed]

Superb and very useful video Luke, 👍🏻 can I ask why you used the HOO setting in Narrowband Normalisation rather than the SHO setting..?

[@lukomatico]

Hey mate! - the SHO setting is for use on actual discrete SHO mono data :-) the HOO is for duo-narrowband data, hope that helps bud!! Cheers!! :-)

[@Astro_Shed]

@@lukomatico cheers Luke, makes sense now…👍🏻

[@diegoburato9084]

How do you create your icons? For the masks for example? thank you so much!

[@lukomatico]

You can just drag a process into your workspace from the little 'new instance' triangle icon on the corner of most tools, from there you can rename & save them as you like 👍

[@briankotak403]

Great tutorial Luke. I use a very similar process workflow (based of course on your previous video). Just wondering if you can partially get rid of that nasty star halo by doing a Clone Stamp over it in the starless image. The stars only image looks ok but the major halo is in the starless image. Worth a try! Thanks again buddy! Dr B from Manitoba, Canada 🇨🇦

[@lukomatico]

Hey Dr. B! :-) You could indeed clone it out quite well I bet, but I feel it's best just left warts & all :-D Cheers!

[@briankotak403]

@@lukomatico haha! Your astrophotos with warts look way better than my best images! Have a great week. Dr B from Manitoba, Canada 🇨🇦

[@bartvanhoyland5507]

Great tutorial!! May I ask what equipment and settings you used to take the original photos? They look great.

[@lukomatico]

Thanks mate!! - it was taken with a celestron RASA11 v2, an Optolong L-extreme F2 filter, and the camera was a Player One Zeus full-frame OSC :-) Cheers!

[@bartvanhoyland5507]

@@lukomatico Thx mate for your answer. Your pictures are amazing. I'm just a beginner with a William Optics Zenithstar 61 II and a Zwo ASI 294 MC pro :), but learning a lot from your accessible tutorials.

[@robertarmstrong9406]

Wonderful Video. One question. Where did you get Mask Blur?

[@lukomatico]

Thanks! - I got it as part of Bill's colour mask tools a while back :-)

[@randallpatrickc]

Excellent - I’m going to try this

[@lukomatico]

Fantastic to hear that!! :-D Good luck mate!!

[@Oamaruastro]

That was very useful and well done-thanks very much! And while it’s hard to fix that halo in Pixinsight, you can deal with it pretty easily in Photoshop if you bring the starless image into Photoshop and use the “remove” tool on it. Does a pretty credible job if you aren’t opposed to that sort of thing.

[@lukomatico]

Thanks for the tip mate! Cheers! :-)

[@chrislee8886]

Referring to BXT… this seems basically to sharpen stars as i didn’t see much effect on the nebula. Are there other benefits i miss?

[@lukomatico]

it's effects are much more pronounced on more finely sampled images I find, or naturally more detailed targets - galaxies etc :-) Cheers!

[@AstroRVe]

Thanks for membership ❤

[@kristofcappoen43]

I LOVE your work, and as a newbie I need some help finding some of the plugins, your HT_Strech, Your masks and so on are there video's where it explains how to make those. And last but not least, how do you create a start page with all the shortcuts? I tried with saving it as a project but DBE and ABE really don't like each other and cause an error. Thanks for your time and effort to make these video's

[@lukomatico]

Thank you for your kind message mate!! I don't have videos on how to make plugins etc, those ones you referred to were created by my friend, Bill Blanshan 👍 Re: saving process icons, you can usually use the small arrow in the bottom corner of a window to drag a shortcut onto your workspace, arrange them how you'd like, right click an empty space on the workspace and press 'select all icons', then right click again and 'save icon set' this should allow you to save them out, so you can right click and 'load icon set' the next time you use pixinsight 👍 hope that helps!!

[@NevadaDesertSkies]

Have you tried using the PI Clone stamp tool to remove the halo artifact while your image is starless?

[@lukomatico]

I could try that yeah, it feels a bit naughty though to hide blemishes with that :-D

[@NevadaDesertSkies]

​@@lukomatico you're creating art, not science...

[@lukomatico]

And art is subjective!

[@valeryo78]

Great video as always! 👍Just to have an idea on the outcome of integration, what are the acquisition details? If I can guess from the file, I'd say it's 50 x 120 sec on Rasa 11 with a ASI 6200 MC and no filters, am I correct? If yes that's an awesome result for such a short integration time!

[@lukomatico]

Thanks mate!! Your details are correct, except that I used a dual narrowband filter 👍 Cheers!

[@valeryo78]

@@lukomatico awesome results! 👍 did you apply a linear fit or anything like this? When I use filters I always get a color cast on integrated images

[@vocecurioso9793]

Hello brother, tell me is this image already color calibrated and imagine solver?

[@lukomatico]

Hey! :-) Just colour calibrated! Clear skies!

[@andreacesanelli759]

Thanks Luke for the 'refreshed' version of your OSC processing workflow. Normally, to avoid touching unwanted areas and to be more 'selective', I adjust the two masks with histogram transformation. Do you think this is a good practice? Cheers mate and clear skies 🔭🌃.

[@lukomatico]

Hey mate! I think that's totally legit, yeah - I've done the same thing myself at times 👍👍 clear skies buddy!

[@sarahjanereilly9335]

Any reason you did not use SPCC in this process? Thanks!

[@lukomatico]

Thanks for watching! - this one is designed to be easier to follow, so I kept SPCC and GHS out of it, you could employ them in your workflow though if you'd like! :-)

[@richardjudge8]

I always love your tutorials, I'm currently in the process of building a pier following your DIY pier one, Is this the data from the livestream that I was watching earlier this week?

[@lukomatico]

Hey mate!! Good luck with that pier, I'm sure you'll be really happy with it :-) and RE: the data, it is indeed the data from the live-stream! Clear skies!

[@ubermollusque]

hello, first, thank you very much for your tutorials, I learned a lot and still learning. Your videos are very clear and cool. I tried this tutorial on m16, but I had an issue : the center zone hoo selected with narrowband was too big, and all the center result in a big blue area. So my question is : is it possible to reduce the area (like in mask range) ? or this tutorial is not adapted for m16 ? thank you.

[@MrGeert1972]

With the new seti Astro star stretch I us starX before stretching and stretch starless and stars separately and that works great. I also do split my channels and do blurx and NoiseXterminator per channel and than linear fit LRGB combination before gradient correction

[@IronMan-2024]

Hi! I get an error when I try to load your process icons, the one missing is NarrowbandNormalization. Can you point me to the repository if possible?

[@rameshtahlan]

I love the post process you doing and can follow till the timeline at 16:27, where you drag and drop the yellow mask onto main image and it turns Red. now comes the problem for me, You say "once again we rest the main image and once again select real time preview". I am not able to follow your mouse as to HOW ARE YOU RESETTING THE MAIN IMAGE,

[@lukomatico]

Sorry about that, I'll have likely mis-spoke! I usually say 'reset the tool and open a preview' - I'll be resetting the tool using the usual icon for that (bottom right in the tool window) Hope that helps!

[@rameshtahlan]

@ thanks for clarifying that. Appreciate it. Will do the post process today and hopefully will reach the final image

[@ChrisNiveda]

Where do i find the " yellowmask" please?

[@lukomatico]

You'll need to download the data set and tools within 👍 link in description! Cheers

[@davidstearn1342]

Luke, Why did you use a linked stretch instead of an unlinked stretch? Based on Bill Blanshan’s recommendation the Oiii and Ha look better if you use a linked stretch prior to NBN. An alternate workflow is to use Color Calibration then GHS prior to NBN.

[@lukomatico]

Great comment mate, I'd suggest for people to make a clone prior to going nonlinear and try both ways - I've had luck either way, but I agree it could be a useful addition 👍 Cheers!

[@rameshtahlan]

Have been following this video. it is great. I am new to all this. At about 16:30 time, you apply yellow mask to main image, and image turns Red, till here I am with you, now you say, "once again reset main image", how are you resetting it, I just cannot see on the screen where your pointer is going to reset ???

[@Bortle10]

Shame that the Adjust Star Halos option in BXT doesn't seem to be doing a thing...

[@lukomatico]

Sorry to hear it mate!

[@Bortle10]

@@lukomatico I meant that I also processed your photo, but BXT didn't do a thing with the star halo

[@nikaxstrophotography]

You should also incorporate some of the Seti Astro scripts as well they are excellent

[@miketanski5189]

Great stuff, can you do a tutorial on SHO Hubble (false) colors?

[@lukomatico]

Coming up this week! :-)

[@miketanski5189]

​@@lukomatico AMAZING, can't wait!

[@christakischristaki5036]

Hello Luc.Can you make a tutorial for mono.RGB+HA+OIII .Great video by the way 😊😊

[@lukomatico]

Thanks mate!! - I can attempt that someday I think! :-) Cheers!

[@TheAstrocast]

Is anyone else having trouble getting the Narrowband Normalization script to load up??? It says its there under modules...says its installed...but it never shows up in scripts.

[@hydromic2518]

Yay!!!!

[@OldskoolRavers]

Have u tried seti astro auto DBE script

[@lukomatico]

Not tried yet mate!! Thanks for the heads up :-)

[@ridearocket]

Hey Luke hope all is well. Many of us in the hobby are stuck to free software. I feel like many of the bigger astro youtubers mainly use PixInsite and create PixInsite tutorials. Have you ever used the PIxel math tool within Siril? And if so, would you consider making an in depth video on Pixel Math in Siril? I know the tool isnt identical to PixInsites Pixel math, but is still very powerful / capable. Regardless. Great work and clear skies.

[@realmcerono]

I think nobody should cheap out on software. It is essential for AP. Compared with anything else you need, pixinsight is not that expensive (they just raised the price to 300usd, I paid 230 back then) it is a one time buy and will probably not get cheaper with time.

[@lukomatico]

Hey mate! - my friend @DeepSpaceAstro has been making a lot of wonderful tutorials with Siril, - he may have what you're looking for! - around the time Siril got Pixel math I was already knee deep into PixInsight so decided to just stick to what I was currently learning, - it may be something I'll revisit but I feel like I'd need to relearn the program at this point to make worthwhile content - cheers! :-)

[@ridearocket]

@@lukomatico Appreciate it! Goodluck and clear skies

[@randallpatrickc]

Thanks!

[@lukomatico]

That's really kind of you!! Thank you so much mate :-D

[@wilsongarcia5240]

I don't need to watch the video to know that is awesome!!!! Also we need a tutorial to process globular clusters the other nigth i use the tutorial for galaxies to process m13 and the result its not bad (to be my first try) also use part of that tutorial with another one to add ha data to my osc data into a galaxie 🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@stuparker776]

agree globular clusters would be great!!!

[@wilsongarcia5240]

Finally had the chance to watch the video and now I want to try it on my M16 data I wonder if you ever can show us how to do mask manually and not depend on scripts I really want to learn how to do color mask After all thanks you really a good teacher 🎉🎉

[@seanod42]

Hi Luke 👋

[@lukomatico]

Hey mate!!

[@alexnado2000]

Merci !

[@lukomatico]

Thank you so much my friend!!

[@CDigata]

Ay up owdo mukka al tell thee dat fnowt tias dun reyt gudun der.. nar`then

[@lukomatico]

😂😂 narr then pal, am reet 'appy tha fort this en is orate! 👍