Master HDR Composition in PixInsight: Complete Workflow with Orion Example

[@Redpulsar2011]

The best PixInsight video I have seen. So much techniques I did not know who existed. Will listen again later and try to process like you did. Thank you !

[@Hidden.Light.Photography]

Thank you! If you don’t mind me asking, which target are you processing?

[@patrickaccogli5161]

Hello. You really enlightened me with your explanation, thank you very much, you are great Merry Christmas

[@Hidden.Light.Photography]

Thank you, I’m glad this helped! If you don’t mind me asking, which project are you working on?

[@himalaYAK1983]

Thank you, this helped a ton.

[@Hidden.Light.Photography]

You are very welcome and I’m very happy to hear this helped! What were you imaging if you don’t mind me asking?

[@himalaYAK1983]

@@Hidden.Light.Photography Seems like my comment with the link to my image was deleted. Anyway, I imaged M42 as well.

[@Hidden.Light.Photography]

That’s very odd, I haven’t deleted any comments :( I’d love to see it though, would you mind emailing it to me? [e-mail]

[@yervantparnagian5999]

With Nebula season slowly on its way, this video will come in really handy Tony. Did you get you Antlia Quad yet? Can't wait to see how that filter does on these nebulas.

[@Hidden.Light.Photography]

And it’s extremely easy to fit into your normal processing workflow which is what I love about it. I’m going to order it this weekend and try it out :) The weather has been a bit gloomy lately

[@yervantparnagian5999]

Hey Tony, For selecting the brightest value when setting the parameters, why is the R value the one we look at and is the R value the only channel we use all the time? Gorgeous image!

[@Hidden.Light.Photography]

Here’s my reasoning for it and some may disagree, however this has given me consistent results. OSC cameras have 2 green to 1 red and 1 blue. With this said, green is generally stronger, but only because it has double the pixels. Blue is generally one of the weakest and noisiest, however because I’m using a filter that emphasizes the blue channel (Antlia triband) is actually showing as one of the strongest. This is an artificial strength though because the filter is helping it along. I choose red because it is a true value that doesn’t have a boost in any way and is generally the cleaner of the three channels. Hope that makes sense.

[@yervantparnagian5999]

@@Hidden.Light.Photography It certainly does. Thank you my friend.

[@Hidden.Light.Photography]

You are very welcome!

[@bobfraile4252]

Great video! Thanks A couple of questions regarding image capture for HDR. I am trying to capture the Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) the past few short nights and I am getting great data on the "sunflower nebula" around it, but the Cat's Eye Nebula is way overexposed using the guidance from both NINA Exposure Plug-in and SharpCap smart histogram recommendations of essentially unity gain and 300 second exposures. How do you choose the appropriate gain and time for the core? Just go with 30 seconds and unity gain? Also, would it make sense to Bin at 2x2 or 4x4 to get a smaller FOV focused on the core?

[@Hidden.Light.Photography]

Thank you! Amazing questions! Being that you’re imaging at 300s I’m assuming you’re doing narrowband? I wouldn’t change the binning, make sure to keep that and FOV the same otherwise you risk not combining the images correctly. Instead, I’d go for less time. Try a 30s sub frame and see how the core looks. I think you might come in nice and clean and 60s or even 120s if you’re doing narrowband, but it’ll be all about experimenting. The good thing about this process is you can do multiple. In other words, you can do 30s, 60s and your regular if you wanted. Hope this helps and please let me know how it turns out. If you need help along the way, you know where to find me :)

[@bobfraile4252]

Thanks, that makes sense. I have a cooled camera and check each of the subs. But given your logic, I am going to increase to 20 as several other You Tubers recommend since Adam Block has a very large, precise system and can get away with 10.

[@Hidden.Light.Photography]

I just wanted to check in and see how everything was coming along and how your project came out :)