A Free Alternative to PixInsight?! Siril 1.0 Beta
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- Опубліковано 8 вер 2024
- I recently learned about this free and open source software project, that includes some must-have tools for early postprocessing like Photometric Color Calibration and background extraction - let's try it out!
Note that I am not an expert (at all!) and haven't read that fine manual yet :) So this is not a tutorial, just an introduction!
Link to Siril: www.siril.org/
GIMP Astrophotography Plugins: www.hennigbuam....
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Great video. I've been using Siril lately, and my flow is usually...
1) Crop / Rotate
2) Background Extraction (use the histogram view mode)
3) Photometric Color Calibration
4) Remove Green Noise
5) Stretch (sometimes a bit of Asinh before using Histogram Transformation)
At that point I jump to GIMP and RawTherapee for further processing.
I have never seen the wonky colors from Photometric Color Calibration that you showed. As long as I can get it to plate solve, I am usually successful in getting the colors to work.
For background extraction, I have better luck generating a grid of sample points and removing the ones on nebula/galaxies/etc than I do when I start from scratch and try to add all of the sample points myself.
The comet alignment feature in the tool works well too. It's worth checking out.
Thanks for the detailed feedback Kristopher! I have a further video with full HOO processing using Siril + Gimp, and the workflow followed is very similar. Good to hear about the comet alignment feature, I'll definitely want to try that!
Siril is primarily an image stacker meant to replace DeepSkyStacker which is a Windows native software. All that image processing functions are meant to clean up your stacked image before moving over to PhotoShop, GIMP, or PIXINSIGHT for fine grained image processing in your work flow. It really does excel in stacking and as a workflow you begin with Siril, move to a robust photo editing software then move back to Siril or LightRoom or DarkTable for some final refinement.
I also remember that the Photometric calibration works on the image that is linearised (because it's able to find more stars I suppose and photometry is done as a final step of editing). --> discuss.pixls.us/t/photometric-color-calibration/17170/2
So in essense once you've done all the editing you come back to Siril to finalize the photometric calibration.
Thanks for the feedback Mohamed! I have yet to test the stacking in Siril, but its post-processing features are really good (I have a separate video on that). The PCC indeed needs to be used on linear images, e.g. before stretching (so as some of the first steps before any Histogram transformation or equivalent), and not as the last step!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek yes you are right, it is a linearised image ... I do wonder then why the glitches the first few times?
Deep Sky Stacker has been rewritten using the Qt graphics library so it can be run on Linux and MacOS
in 0.99.8.1 the photometric calibration has worked 100% percent of the time for me. FYI. Thanks Cuiv for the video. enjoy your style and humor
Thanks Alain for this review. I like you style: short, simple, not too detailed - let the viewer decide and find out by themself. I love Siril because I work under Linux. Unfortunately in the beginning most of the documentation and videos where in french. This is not the best to get an open source software out into the wild. But I think, they checked it out now :-)
It also is, as most astrophotography tools an expert tool. Basic understanding is necessary and RTFM :-) As often with opensource one should be patient. Things often develop over years. But then with great power. This software needs such reviews, needs feedback from the users to its developer. So: go for it.
Cheers Axel
Cuiv, another great post! You are a youtube post machine with amazing content. Thank you for all your post.
Hahaha, thanks Walter! There's just so much to talk about! :-)
Thank you for doing this. I have been interested in this especially since it works on the Mac. But there was before this absolutely nothing on it. Hope you do some more in depth videos about it.
I have a video coming about it tomorrow, about an HOO combination :-)
Hello Cuiv,
one (important) thing you forgot to mention, is that "siril" is cross-platform, it's available on Linux, Mac OS X and MS Windows, contrary to most of the free/open source astrophotography which mostly only available on MS Windows.
I just started astrophotography with an old dslr, and I'm using Nebulosity on OS X, then tried "siril" to compare with Nebulosity but ended up with green looking results and gave up. Now you showed me how to move on! Thanks a lot!
g.
Very good point! Nebulosity is also what I started with, but I had trouble with it and immediately switched to PixInsight!
ummm...PixInsight runs on Windows, MacOS, Linux (it's native development platform) and freeBSD...it can also be run on as many computers as you want if you own a valid licence. There's also excellent support on the forums and via Email too.
mrtheoden Indeed as one expect for a paid licence. In the end its what has one software to offer over another and for some it can be as simple as the look of the interface. For the technically minded open source offers more flexibility.
Seafox0011 been using open source software for many years - doesn’t mean it offers more to the technical user
Seafox0011 most open source software lacks features, polish and generally has very poor UI
Good to see some tutorials on this program. I've tried using an earlier version before and was just completely lost on it so switched to sequator for stacking which seemed to work better, until I moved to a CMOS astro camera and couldn't load the fits files.
Wouldn't mind giving siril another go. Being a Linux user is a bit of a challenge at times.
BTW I enjoy this channel 😊
Thanks for the feedback Allan! I'll have a more complete tutorial coming in the next couple of weeks! Being a Linux user is indeed quite a challenge, it seems. I still have Windows on all my astro-related PCs...
I'm no expert, but I was playing around with Siril stacking FITS files. I couldn't figure out all the manual steps to get it to work, but I did figure out how to modify a DSLR script to work with FITS files. To make a script work with FITS, I found I had to remove the convertraw lines and remove the -debayer parameter on the preprocess line. Siril was then able to stack the FITS files, and actually gave a better result than DSS.
Thanks Cuiv! Great rundown on this software that could be applicable to many in your subscriber base. Kudo's to the developers who spend countless hours coding to make software that can make our workflow easier and more efficient. Some helpful comments here too! Thanks for sharing and enjoy your videos.
Absolutely! Thanks for the feedback!
Great to see this review. So important to consider tools that focus on Mac options in astrophotography since for us Mac users, most of the alternatives require variants of frigging your system to accept Windows versions. I found the Open vs the Home and then change directories button the most confusing at the beginning especially when setting up sequences. However the rest is very useful to play with.
Very interesting - thx for the demo.
My pleasure Chuck! I think I'll be doing a full free software processing video as well in the near future!
Using this since switching to Linux, works great, Vive la France !
Hey PixInsight works on Linux too! ;) I wish I could switch to Linux on my main PC, but my non-HTC VR headsets...
Thanks so much for this! I tend to use Linux only and Siril worked amazingly out of the box with my test data of Vega (actually DSS was unable to easily!). I also live in Tokyo and even with a light pollution reduction filter after about 30s of exposure I had the green and blue channel show some noise from the pollution, which made me give up attempting to image anything fancy until I could go to darker skies... (if only I had one of them fancy narrow band filters...) But the photometric callibration of Siril worked great! So now I might try to image M31 whenever we get another clear and not so hazy night...
I am beyond excited! Been watching your videos so much recently and I love that you actually get into the details of the nerdy stuff because that is exactly what I need and love!
I'm so glad this is helpful Frederico! And yes, M31 is indeed possible from Tokyo, even without an LP filter! Make sure to take a LOT of 30 second exposures. I think with just 200 x30s you'll start having a decent result, and with 1000 x 30s exposures you'll start having a really good result. Good luck &clear skies (because if you get clear skies, so do I :-D)
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Thanks so much for your advice Cuiv!!
I'll make sure to take at least 200 and as many as I possibly can!
Indeed, clear skies to both of us! 😂
Looking forward to your next video!!
Thanks for showing it to us Cuiv!
My pleasure -Leon- Richard!
Thank you for the tip on photometric color calibration! Tried a couple of more times and it worked!
Siril has become even more like PixInsight with its addition of Pixel Math now in version 1.0.0. 🤩
Hey Cuiv, thanks for the great video, I shot M42 last night and you vid was super helpful!
Very happy with the result using your approach.
I've been using Siril for some time and only the new single window a short time , the preprocessing and stacking works really well , I hadn't noticed the Photometry Cal in there must try it out. Oh and a bonus works on a Mac and Linux as well
Only a Beta but mostly working well PixInsight just too convoluted at the moment for me.
I've yet to try the preprocessing and stacking, but I'll get there at some point! It's great to see such solutions in the open source community!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek I tried the Photometric Cal on a image of NGC253 Sculptor Galaxy and to my surprise it worked pretty well. only about 16 60sec lights pretty noisy. Have to try out guiding I think. Scope is F7
Clifford - PixInsight is not easy to use, I agree. However, the UI is excellent, the best UI I have seen in any piece of software in over 23 years of using computers. It seems odd cos it's very different to anything else on the market, but if you take the time to learn the basics, and develop a basic workflow it is very intuitive and powerful.
Your enthusiasm is infectious. Can I borrow some of it? :)
Sure! Enthusiasm is infinite, so I can distribute finite quantities of it without issue :-)
Yes I am happy too about Siril...a good alternative.
Yep! :-)
If at first you don't succeed give up! The exception to this in life is SIRIL! 😊
Exactly :-) "Nope. Nope. Oh, okay I guess"
This is sweet indeed! Thanks for posting this.
Might as well give this a try, I love the auto stretch ability. That was something I always had trouble with in photo editing software that's not geared towards astrophotography
Very cool, I will try it out! I tried pix insight for a while but honestly couldn't get over the user-interface haha the auto hide/show console window was very useful however
Enjoy! It can be a bit weird to use, and it does crash, but overall it's quite encouraging!
Thank You. I am going to try this now!
The original French language guide suggests using background extraction (and turning the display view to 'Histogram' when doing that) before doing anything else other than initial cropping. Nominally the photometric colour correction is supposed to obviate the need for green noise reduction, but I find that while it does a better job of reducing green noise than manual colour correction it still often needs further green noise reduction.
Excellent…. As always.
very, very instructive indeed
Thanks Cuiv! I am into this hobby for maybe a year and a half, so I wouldn‘t consider myself an absolute beginner no more, but still: There is so much more to learn! And videos like this help a lot, especially for mac users who don‘t have many other options than siril. But I am just curious: Trying to follow you for the third time through that processing: WHERE IS THE LAZINESS 😳😂🤩?! You don‘t seem lazy AT ALL, on the contrary! Keep it up! How is the weather in Japan? Here it‘s been terrible for weeks ... on the other hand, time to work on the processing though ... greetings from Stefan, living near lake constance in the heart of europe
Nice, good to have options!
Indeed! I was super happy to see this!
Hello at 2min41. We see a really purple image. This is because the debayering is not done in the right orientation ;).
Check Siril's preferences.
You can have a look here too: free-astro.org/index.php?title=Siril:FITS_orientation
The normal hue is generally green (due to Bayer pattern). I may be wrong but....
Cyril, a dev of Siril.
That makes sense! So it was thinking BGGR instead or RGGB I would assume! Thanks for the feedback Cyril!
Nice, gotta try siril soon
I wish I found this video sooner!
You need to check the script to process batch of lights & DFO...
I read the other comments, but do believe it about does what Pix does, for free, and some better.
I haven't tried it yet, but I will very soon! It seems to have a set of criteria to exclude frames (which is great), but the Subframe Selector in PixInsight is just so freaking good... I will look more into it, thanks for letting me know!
Thanks for the info. Keep it up.
Thanks, Cuiv
Certainly worth checking out.
Definitely! I used it more afterwards, and was able to get a very convincing bicolor Narrowband combination done, so it's really quite good. Further video on that upcoming as well :-)
Lol I just purchased Pixinsight a couple of days ago xD
Although I will be following Siril in the future to see how it's coming along.
Don't worry, PixInsight is vastly superior - but Siril has some of the basics that make it a good choice to start with. PixInsight is still the reference as far as I'm concerned - you will not regret your purchase!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Yeah, I was using the trial version of Pixinsight until now and I am loving it after getting the hang of it. As soon as I got the message saying the trial version was over, I hopped to the website and bought it. It's really awesome.
this was very helpful man! thanks
Nice video. Interesting to see free software which can bring some of the functionality of a PixInsight to life.
I was interested to hear you talk about GIMP. I have been thinking about using GIMP for a while. Do you have a video on GIMP. Or will you be making a video about GIMP?
Thanks Philip! I am thinking about making a video about stacking and processing an image entirely with free software, including GIMP. I am not a GIMP expert, but can use it a bit. I will need to learn more about it!
Cool Video.
Thank you for this
Cool! Thanks for the video!
Thanks for watching!
Very interesting video ! Siril already downloaded and installed but not tested. I'm going to build a new PC soon and I think it will run a linux distribution (don't know which yet) since I'll be able to run most of the software I use.
Good luck with Linux! It's shockingly good these days... Will you be going the Ryzen way?
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Sure Ryzen 7 3700x :-)
your video was sooo good I didn't skip ads at the end ;)
Thanks for the info.
Horay! FREE!! You saved me $300 on Pixinsight? You may be the lazy geek.....but I am the cheap geek. And, I have a feeling that I’m not the only one😎
Hahaha! Well, to be fair, PixInsight is still vastly superior - but it's great to see some free alternatives as well!
Thanks Cuiv, wow I’m gonna give that a shot. I wish they would come up with a software that does your masks for you coz masks confuse me & it looked as though this software worked with image & left background alone which I struggle with. Again, thanks for revealing this new software. Be blessed brother & Clear Skies…
Plus I think they just released a new version!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Thanks
Great tutorial!
fantastic useful video, could you post a link to the Gimp Astronomy plugin for your viewers, to put things into perspective, for me it means any saving on software then goes towards many of the bits and pieces needed for imaging so a guiding camera and scope is next on the list and means that at the moment I don't need to worry about expensive software, shout out to Siril Developers for there awesome program and your understanding that beginners don't have deep pockets.
Thanks mike! I've added the link in the description. You make a very, very valid point! Stay tuned as I'm planning a processing video using only free software!
would be interesting to see what the workflow is for monochrome cameras
Thanks for sharing!
My pleasure!
I wonder if you could update this as Siril has moved on and there are a lot more scripts these days,many thanks in anticipation
Hi Cuiv, have you checked ASTAP? Since you mentioned DSS (limited to windows), ASTAP is another program for stacking and it works across all platforms.
I am using ASTAP for plate solving, but I haven't used it for stacking up to now! I've used DSS without issue on Linux with WINE, but you're right that in theory it is indeed limited to Windows...
Just found your channel and subbed. Getting back into astronomy big time here! I have a question for you though, do u know where people get content for their regular astronomy channels? Ones that show deep space images and videos? I'm guessing it might be images that are in the public domain and free to use, or they have a license. However, I still don't know from where? I have googled and reached out to a few on here, but as yet, I have had no answers. I thought of shutter-stock, but when I looked through it, it didn't fit with the images I've been seeing. I know for astrophotography, you can get all your own content, but I would like to work on the subject as a whole. Any info would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance. Daniel.
Hi Daniel, and welcome to the channel! I actually have no idea how others do - I use my own pictures to exactly avoid this kind of situation. You can get and use Hubble Images though afaik... Good luck!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek thank u.
Thank you quiv, this was great!
My pleasure! I'm making a video with a full processing workflow using only free software as well - stay tuned for that!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Sounds great
Great, thanks a lot !, Cheers.
My pleasure :D
For the weird color, it seems you were looking at the blue channel even though the UI was stating you were on the RGB channel (probably some bug). Did you try clicking on the red channel and then RGB ? My guts tell me it would "solve" it
Oh that's a good point! I should try it out :) Thank you!
I have ti say the beta still needs work but is definitely promising just for the getting rid of the green
I agree - I've recently used it for a full bicolor Narrowband processing workflow, and it gave me a very decent result (video upcoming). Looking forward to seeing how it evolves!
Please do another video on Siril, maybe workflow on how to use it?
Yep, it's coming in a couple of weeks! I'm working on a full processing workflow using only free software! Stay tuned for it :-)
Those GIMP plugins will only work on Windows unless you want to download the source and build it for a Mac or Linux.
I love SiriL . But not try PI yet. Can you have comparison between them?
Sine SiriL 0.99.7 also got annotation, it's great feature as well.
There's just no comparison between them, PixInsight is miles ahead - impossible to really compare.
Tried 6 times now with Ngc 6888 every time i seem to get the blue tint
That's too bad - another commenter suggested trying to select another one of the tabs (to be on the RGB tab). Likely a bug that will get fixed. I tested the normal color calibration as well, which seems to work decently well also!
When I save an image that I have processed in SiriL and then look the at the saved file the changes I have made in SiriL are not there. Any idea as to why?
I use Siri to stack using the scripts for my dslr data very easy , not a very intuitive program tbh to do manually then process using Startools (free to try ) have a look at that program ciev .
Yep, I know Startools, and I've used it several times, but I can't seem to get a good result with it... I recently used Siril to do a narrowband combination of M27, and it worked shockingly well...
If you have a problem have word with ivo Jager Startools author on Startools forum or email him he will take time to overcome any problems , Startools 1.7 released soon hopefully there’s an on-line talk in the pipeline in next few months , if it comes to fruition I will give you a heads up .
Like Star Tools as well. Its noise reduction, powerful masks that can be used in most of its modules, and color balancing are very good
I use it and I love it 😏
Cool! It's a really neat piece of software!
👍👍
Can we process a milkyway photo with foreground element using SIRIL? I could not find anything on that.
I've never done that, so I actually don't know! Sorry
I'm gonna try this before I commit to buying PixInsight, maybe it works for me
It covers the basics! But it lacks a lot still (masks, masked stretch, noise reduction, HDRMultiscaleTransform, SubframeSelector, etc. etc.) Still it can give decent "baseline" results that are quite pleasing!
there is no substitute for the real thing...
@@davepastern true, but I'm not looking for a substitute but something to achieve good results with
@@prnzssLuna a half baked measure results in half baked results. Just saying.
@@davepastern as a beginner to all of this I feel like I have much more important things to learn/master than that. You definitely can get great results with free software. Not like I have the money for Pi rn anyways so there's that
there are freelancers who use to provide this service in this program software¿?
Thanks! do you know if it supports fuji RAF Files?
I have no idea, sorry!
I couldn't get it to plate solve my image of SH2-187. Oh well.
That's too bad... you can still use the normal color calibration that also works quite well though..!
@@CuivTheLazyGeek I did use the color calibration and background extraction. It did a very good job on those.
Looks like a good program but the first step already doesn’t work for me.
Is there any way to avoid the core of orion nebulae being over exposed when using siril?
I'd have two subframe exposure times (short for the core, long for the rest), process each in Siril, then combine them in Gimp with layers...
@@CuivTheLazyGeek Thank you, it worked! :)
Not everyone has windows. Siril runs on LINUX!
I have tried several. For a noob like me....Photoshop is not free and complex; Pixinsight is non-intuitive, complex, and expensive. GIMP's GUI needs work. I am downloading SiriL now.
I'm planning on making a free software processing video in the near future as well, so hopefully that will help!
PixInsight is very intuitive if you take the time to learn the basics. There's tonnes of tutorial videos online too - I really recommend the VisibleDark channel - Sean has top notch tutorials.
@@CuivTheLazyGeek GIMP seems well featured, but the UI is not intuitive...have to look for stuff.
yea i like siril , it's simple not like pixinsight need a guide book.lol
Hahaha, I think complexity comes along with features, always difficult to strike a good balance!
Cuiv, The Lazy Geek Scriptablility becomes important as complexity increases IMO.
I think I need a better computer it is very very slow on mine
Maybe it has to do with its beta nature...
Cyril? Are you speak Japanese?
Can't figure it out for the life of me.
The effort you put in your astro is nothing match Lazy Geek 😆 is super hard work n time spending!
But it's a lot of fun! Thanks Kokoro-san!
Cyril? Oria? Are you speaking Japanese?
👍😁🇦🇺🔭
just try to gesticulate a bit less ....plz
Siril 1.0 en titre, Siril 0.99.4 en capture 😷
Sur leur site "Siril 0.99.4 (1.0.0 beta testing)", donc c'est équivalent !
Ok, c'était plus pour pinailler, c'est mon principal logiciel pour les pré-taitements, grâce à toi je sais qu'il y a une nouvelle version 😁
Continue ce que tu fais tes vidéos sont cool et instructives 👍
I'll trust you on the pronunciation of the name, vignetting not withstanding ;)
Vig-net-ing :D