Conquer the Glaze Dragon With INSIGHT Glaze Chemistry Software
The PDF Manual.
Modified: November 20, 2021

Desktop Insight is now free!

Download it from the Files panel in your Insight-live.com account or from the home page at https://digitalfire.com (current downloads only include the program file, manual, starter recipe, materials - overrides data is built in).

Desktop Insight is legacy, we had to move on-line

We moved functionality to a private account at Insight-Live.com - because people now expect to get at their data from any device anywhere. And for our survival. Ceramic lab work is much bigger than glaze chemistry, it is a physical world where testing, observation, record-keeping are vital. Insight-Live is about maintaining that data. Its recipes share pictures, they have firing schedules, notes, development history, testing data, links, they belong to projects. And they accumulate into the thousands and are easy to find and compare.

Importing Desktop Insight recipes into your Insight-Live.com account

Desktop Insight, by default, opens and saves recipes to its INSIGHTDATA.DB recipe database file (that file is in your documents/insight folder, it can be uploaded and imported into Insight-live). If Desktop Insight does not find the INSIGHTDATA.DB file on startup, it imports, into its database, all the recipe files (e.g. RCP, RCX) it finds in your documents/insight/recipe folder (it does not erase the original files, but no longer uses them). From then on, when you choose File -> Open (not File -> Open File System) you open recipes from its database (using the Recipe Database Window). When you Save you save to the database. See page 94 of the manual for more information.

Why is Insight-Live so much different to use than Desktop Insight?

Because you have to be able to compare ten recipes side-by-side. For physics as well as chemistry. And people need to be able to find thousands on any device from anywhere.

Desktop Insight focusses solely on glaze chemistry

Insight FAQ

There is a direct relationship between the way ceramic glazes fire and their chemistry. Insight is a calculation tool anyone can use to learn and harness the power of glaze chemistry.

Without glaze chemistry you'll never really have control and you could be a slave to your suppliers or the trafficing in recipes that never work.

Overwhelmed by glaze chemistry? Try starting here.

What People Have Said

"After a life as biologist and in information management, I am now a beginner in ceramics. Installation of Insight was without problem. What a wonderful tool and what gigantic sum of information. Thank you for your work!"

"I am firing a downdraft propane kiln to cone 10. I have been using the Digitalfire software to better understand the glazes I know and see their similarities/differences. I enjoy glaze chemistry but I am tired of testing blindly and floundering around with countless buckets of glazes that don't really satisfy. I want to test smarter."

"I have just finished a course in the use of your program with Ron Roy at Loyalist College in Belleville and found it very helpful. Thanks, so much, for the product."

"I have been very impressed with the software thus far as I begin to explore its features as well as your considerable expertise. My eventual goal is to simplify the glaze situation in the studio by employing Frit based glazes overall and/or simple base glazes that can cover a reasonable range of colors and provide consistent reliability (and safety) to the beginning student ... and avoid any toxic elements that would compromise safety in the studio or in the fired, functional, piece. "

"Our Advanced Clay Class is studying the chemistry of clays and glazes this semester. Our professor, told us we really should buy Insight, he says it will be a tremendous help to us from here on out. He says Insight is a must-have for every potter. I took a brief look at it, and know it will be a great resource. It looks to pretty easy to follow, too."

"It's also become obvious that even with glaze software I need to have a lot of information in my head, which means education, and obviously you hold the edge there too with your excellent website."


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