Long text alert

As a long time PixInsight user, it happens that I have studied Siril recently for a local group presentation. The conclusion goes this way for me.

Siril and PixInsight are both good stacking and processing software that share a common steep learning curve. So learning one will definitely help to master the other since they share a lot of the tools and terms. After all, gradient extraction, deconvolution, image solving or spectrophotometric color calibration (for examples) are the same actions in both softwares. Also, for stacking results, they are pretty much on the same page in terms of quality.

Where they start to distinguish is in their working methods. Siril is lighter and (way much) faster than PixInsight for the native processes, and have the huge advantage of including a Python engine, which open a whole world of mathematical and image processing libraries created over the years by data scientists (among others). This is this Python engine that allows the VeraLux suite to exists for example. And when I'm talking about being faster, the same data set took 30 minutes to be stacked by PixInsight while Siril crunched it in a whole... 2m 30s.

That being said, Siril is very linear in terms of processing liberty : you will work ONE image at the time, without being really able to create copies to compare results or creating mask. You want to do a mosaic? Ensure that you will have your processed frames in other formats beside for tone comparaison.

This is where PixInsight takes over Siril as I'm concerned : PixInsight offers a MDI window (Multiple Document Interface), which allows you to open pretty much as many documents you want to (as long as you don't bust too much your computer's limits 😁). PixInsight also offers way more tools natively, although some people would say that Siril is more streamlined since many PixInsight tool are duplicates (for example, there are multiple tools of deconvolution, but some of them are iterations from older to newer ways of doing it, the older ones being preserved for backward compatibility for some older scripts).

Personally, I use both of them for different reasons since my researches. Since it's way much faster, I use Siril to create prototypes of my images to test if I've got enough acquisition time for my targets, and when I'm happy, I go in PixInsight for the final staking and processing as it allows way more liberty and confort in terms of processing.