Every astrophotography image I produce goes through PixInsight at some point, so it felt only right to put together a tutorial on getting it installed in the first place. This one covers the Mac. The process is mostly painless, but there are a couple of moments where it pays to know what's coming, including one stage of the installer that looks completely frozen but isn't. I speak from experience on that one.
First things first, you'll need a licence. PixInsight is a paid piece of software, but if you haven't used it before you can get a free trial licence, which gives you the full application with no restrictions for 45 days before you commit to purchasing. That's plenty of time to decide whether it's for you. If you do decide you like it, you can buy a commercial licence, after which you'll receive an email containing your licence key and gain access to the download section of the website.
With that sorted, head to the Software Distribution section of the PixInsight website and log in with your username and password. You'll see the available versions of the software for the various operating systems. Pick the latest version, find the row for macOS and download that package. It's a pretty big file, so depending on your connection speed it may take a little while; pop the kettle on.
Once the download completes, run the installer and work through the steps:
- Click continue, then agree to the licence information.
- Change the install location if you want to; I just used the default.
- The first few steps fly by, but the final stage, registering updated components, seems to hang for a very long time. I genuinely thought it had frozen the first time I did this. Stick with it, it will get there.
- When the installation reports as successful, close the installer and move it to the bin, as you're done with it.
Now launch PixInsight itself. I'd installed it before, so it already knew my licence information, but you'll likely be prompted to input your licence key if you haven't already done so.
There's one last thing to do. The first time you run it, PixInsight will prompt you to install some updates. It seems a bit odd given you've only just downloaded it from the Software Distribution page, but there are normally a few small things that need applying. Click apply and it will download them, however they don't actually install until you restart the app. Quit PixInsight when prompted, let it run the update, and it will relaunch once complete. This part is really quick, and once it relaunches you're all set.
And that's it, PixInsight installed and ready to chew through your data. If you'd rather see each step on screen as you follow along, the video at the top of this post covers the whole thing click by click.