Astrophotography: Processing Galaxies in PixInsight udemy course free download
What you'll learn:
- Using PixInsight to process deep sky galaxy images
- Calibrating and integrating sub-exposures with WeightedBatchPreprocessing
- Noise reduction with MURE Denoise and TGVD
- Sharpening with Deconvolution and Photoshop's Smart Sharpening
- Automatic Background Extraction
- Color combination and calibration
- Creating effective luminance and star masks
- Aesthetic tweaking of your final image
Requirements::
- You should know the basics of deep sky astrophotography and how to acquire multiple sub-exposures of an object through your telescope. We only cover the processing of your images, not how to collect them.
- You'll need a copy of PixInsight (they have a free trial) if you'd like to follow along hands-on.
- The sample data used in the course requires at least 6GB of hard drive space.
Description:
PixInsight is a powerful tool, but with a steep learning curve. If you're ready to take your astrophotography to the next level, this course will de-mystify PixInsight and unleash its potential for you. Even if you're an experienced PixInsight user, I think you'll find some tips, tricks, and scripts you may not have encountered before.
We'll walk through the processing of the galaxy M61, a distant, challenging target that includes an image of a recent supernova! As we go, we'll cover:
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Installing my PixInsight process icons and third-party scripts to simplify things
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Identifying and discarding bad sub-frames with the Blink process
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Calibrating your frames across multiple nights using the WeightedBatchPreprocessing script
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Weighted stacking with WeightedBatchPreprocessing
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Linear noise reduction with MURE Denoise
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Cropping your integrated images
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Creating luminance, range, and star masks
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Sharpening your image with deconvolution
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Background extraction
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Color combination, luminance integration, and photometric color correction
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Stretching into non-linear space while preserving star colors
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Nonlinear noise reduction with TGVD Denoise
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Aesthetic tweaking with RGB and saturation curves
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Shrinking and re-shaping stars with MorphologicalTransform
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Annotating your images
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Final tweaks in Photoshop
This walkthrough uses monochrome data collected over 3 nights using luminance, red, green, and blue color filters. But many of these techniques will be the same if you're using a color camera as well.
Don't let PixInsight's unusual user interface and complexity scare you off - it's worth learning, and can really take your images to the next level.
Who this course is for:
- Astrophotographers intimidated by PixInsight's complexity and learning curve
- Experienced PixInsight users looking for some new tips and tricks