In February 2015 I attended a PixInsight intensive workshop in Alcalalí, Valencia, Spain given by Vicent Perris, and the venue hosted by Colin Cooper. The aim of the workshop is to get everybody in the group up to speed using PI. The small size of the class (maximum 10 people) ensures that the participants move together at a steady pace and learn by doing.
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| Each participant receives a workshop handbook complete with all the needed workflow charts, basic processing examples and a detailed article for each start to finish example. Each participant also receives a full set of laminated PI workflow charts describing the techniques and covering the main concepts and Start To Finish examples in a visual style and will be indispensable when working back at base.
Even if you think you know how to use PI, I can still recommend this workshop as Vicent explains the correct way to process images and will show you many tricks.
On completion of the workshop you will come away with many Process Icon Sets that I am sure you will use for all your future processing......they are invaluable!! |
You can check out forthcoming workshops at the link
Image Processing Workshops.
Processed Image Using Workshop Process Icons
Before I attended the workshop my processing workflow consisted producing master Bias, Darks and Flats in PI followed by batch processing and integration of master light frames, also in PI. The master light frames where then imported in to Photoshop and colourised using a 9 layer stack which was based on procedures documented in the FitsLiberator website, well no more shall I use this method!!
Below shows an image processed entirely in PixInsight, from 9.8 hours of narrow band data taken in August 2013, which gives a much more pleasing and subtle result, and colour calibration is much easier to control. You can see the originally Photoshop processed image here original IC1318 Butterfly Nebula which I will probably preserve for posterity and as an example of not how to do it.
General Astro-Imaging Courses
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| Colin also offers onsite courses from this same superb venue at Alcalali that teach start to finish processes involved in taking astro-images, including;
- Hands on experience with setting up a mount, telescope and camera.
- Planning targets
- Capturing data
- Adding subsequent data night after night, year after year
- Processing the data
- Learning image processing software
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You can check out what Colin has to offer at the link
APinSpain.
