Orion Nebula (M42) with a DSLR, Start to Finish, Pt. 2a - PixInsight

[@davidrousseau8066]

Nico your tutorials are amazing! I followed your Photoshop tuto and now that I"m trying PixInsight for 45 days....I realize you ALSO have detailed tutorials on PI ! You're the best!!! :) I really don't understand why you (only) have 16K followers, You really are one of the top channels for astrophoto. Thanks for helping the rest of us :)

[@NebulaPhotos]

Glad they are helpful! PixInsight is amazing, but hard to teach. I'm still working though how best to explain it without going overboard. Clear skies, Nico

[@TomJesper]

This is the best video I've seen. My photo looks amazing now compared to PS alone! You're ace!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Awesome! Glad it helped!

[@flexable9256]

Very very helpful tutorial. I took my first "real" DSO (M42 of course) recently with my little setup (fuji xt3+redcat 51+star adventurer+L-Pro), 51 lights and 10 darks, for a test, from my balcony in a bortle 8 sky with an almost full moon in the sky (just above Orion). The end result is nice (at least, for me, as this is a first time - that would be ugly for someone with experience). As I have no access to the north, I did a polar alignment... with an App on the phone and pointing the tracker to it with a precision of a cow (or two). Even with that focal length and 30" exposure (iso 800), no real star trailing - it's not perfect, but surprisingly good. You are among the few channels that I follow to learn how to do things, and you are among the best. So, thanks again.

[@acapulcoastro5967]

Brilliant tutorial I learnt so much from this guide @ 11:42 where you attempt to do a stretch, first un-click the linked stretch icon (top left), *then* do the stretch for the outcome you were looking for I followed your guide having shot Orion for the very first time with a new refractor at the weekend Very happy with the results :)

[@AMoose454]

Great video! Thanks

[@robertmryan]

Great tutorial. A minor request: It would be lovely to have bookmarks as you go from tool to tool, because I've had to watch this a few times and it's a little hard to navigate and/or jump back to the relevant section without bookmarks in the video. But other than that minor suggestion, this was great introduction for PixInsight noob.

[@michaelhawkins6382]

I have been trying to dive in to astrophotography after 2 years of just viewing. I understand the basics of gathering lights/flats/darks/bias frames, but your in depth video and then this walk through with PixInsight is a godsend. Thank you so much for taking the time to make these videos. Do you accept donations?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hi Michael, Glad you liked the video! I just started a Patreon campaign for accepting donations. You can find it here: www.patreon.com/nebulaphotos

[@rjhanby]

Nico, I went through your video, starting, pausing, and rewinding until I got a good image. Did that again. Third time through, I made notes. For the next couple of projects, I followed my notes. Would you have a problem if I shared those notes? All of this has helped me learn the "why" of what I'm doing as opposed to wandering through all the possibilities trying to figure out the "what" to do.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Please feel free to share your notes. Cheers, Nico

[@danielmills2992]

Hey, i watched nearly all your videos and fine them fantstic thank you for all your help. could i ask for two requests? a pixinisght tutorial for bobes galaxy and also how to shoot rosetta nebula. keep up the great content!

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hi Daniel, Thanks for the suggestions, I'll add those to my list. Clear skies, Nico

[@anuragdaware1981]

Hey great tutorial. Can you make a video on light pollution filters to be used for city skies for DSLR Astrophotography please?

[@NebulaPhotos]

I sold my light pollution filters to help fund my narrowband filters, but if I every buy some more or can borrow some from friends, I will do a video. I will say that if you are trying to capture emission nebulae, they help a LOT even with an unmodified camera.

[@flyinglenses4shini4]

pixinsight has change for the color calibration how would you do it today ? Photo Metric color calibration. thanks for the video btw, watched many of them that you make, keep it up please ^_^

[@rickviel9]

Nico, Thanks for the video. I'm relatively new to Astrophotography (~8 months). I've been using PS CC but looking at your final product using PI and comparing it to the one you did in PS this one seems significantly better to me. As far as a future tutorial would you consider how you processed the Witch Head Nebula that you did a few weeks ago? Or another where the nebula signal is very small. I've downloaded for the 45 day free trial. Thanks again

[@ianmcdermot]

Love your tutorials. It seems like PI got rid of the "Batch Preprocessing" script you use, though. There's a "Weighted Batch Preprocessing" now, but I feel like it does something else entirely 😅. My M1 Max MacBook Pro was redlining for almost a whole day and it spit out over 1TB of files and no integrated image that I can find haha. Do you know if the script you used is available anywhere for download? Edit: Nevermind, it actually spit out *four* different master lights with different names. I guess that explains why it took so long.

[@NebulaPhotos]

Yeah, the weighted batch preprocessing is even better, but takes longer. I haven't done a video on it, but I know there are many up on KZbin. Let me know if you have any questions.

[@danielmills2992]

hi nico, i watch this every time i post process, could you possibly do a video of galaxy process in pixinsight?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Good timing Daniel. If the weather cooperates, I should have a video on shooting/processing a galaxy up in the next month

[@danielmills2992]

@@NebulaPhotos fantastic ! Thank you nico. Appriciate the videos your delivery in explanation is great.

[@raziqkanani7059]

hey Nico i've been following along with the tutorial but im near the end and i realized i cropped a bit too much of the image, is there anyway to undo the crops i made earlier on? thanks

[@NebulaPhotos]

Hi Raziq, possibly. If you still have PixInsight open and and haven’t saved and closed the application then try opening the history explorer in the lower left corner. Choose the “view” that is your photo, and then find when you cropped. Pull the other processes (after that) out to the workspace. The double click to before the crop to revert the photo to that state. Finally apply the processes you dragged to the workspace to your photo. I think that will work. I believe the only way to retain the history through saving is with “Save Project” rather than just save. I rarely do this because it takes up so much disk space

[@Jwalker1742]

Hi there. I just watched your Photoshop version then came to this one and to me, the final product of this version is sooooo much better. The photoshop version seems to be completely separate from the background in the final image and not near as clear as this version. Is pixinsight THAT much better than photoshop?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: if I added a couple hundred dollars of plugins with photoshop, I could have gotten a better result, but I left that out to make it more approachable. Some of the plugins that could help: Gradient Exterminator, Flat Aid Pro, Annie’s Actions, Carbonis Actions.

[@Jwalker1742]

Nebula Photos awesome. Thanks! Eventually I’ll make the investment

[@catpool]

Which do you prefer Photoshop or Pixinsight?

[@NebulaPhotos]

I enjoy using both programs, and still use both for almost every photo, usually starting in PixInsight for 70% and going to Photoshop for the final 30%. If I only could use one for post-processing deep sky astrophotography, I would choose PixInsight. It has far more useful tools, especially when you get more advanced, and want to spend a lot of time processing your pictures.

[@raytbrown2]

Basic?

[@NebulaPhotos]

Ha, yep. Maybe not easy, but definitely on the basic side (in terms of astrophotography processing). With some of my current photographs, I can easily spend 40-60 total hours processing before I arrive at a final version.

[@martijnschuman]

If I export the final picture to a png file, the blue color really explodes, I no matter how much I turn the blue down, every png/jpeg export is way to blue

[@martijnschuman]

It also says: The JPEG format does not support some existing data in this image: * FITS keywords * Display Fuction (STF) * Image properties

[@NebulaPhotos]

I believe this happens when PI embeds the monitor color profile in to the image. First thing I would try: use ICCProfileTransformation under processes to assign "sRGB" to the photo, then export as jpeg or png. If that doesn't work, let me know, and I have another idea.

[@martijnschuman]

@@NebulaPhotos Hi, sorry for my late response. It didn't work unfortunately

[@NebulaPhotos]

@@martijnschuman ok, darn. Well, my second idea is more of a workaround, but it has worked well for me in the past. It is to copy-paste into a different program and see if it will save with correct colors in that case. The second program can be anything where you can paste in an image file and save as jpeg or png. Photoshop will work, but I think even MS Paint would work.

[@martijnschuman]

@@NebulaPhotos even this doesn't help. The colors still look weird, it's way to blue

[@drrach1]

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