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.

• Fix problems like crazing, blistering, pinholing, settling, gelling, clouding, leaching, crawling, marking, scratching, powdering.
• Substitute frits or incorporate better, cheaper materials, replace no-longer-available ones (all while maintaining the same chemistry).
• Adjust melting temperature, gloss, surface character, color.
• Identify weaknesses in glazes to avoid problems.
• Create and optimize base glazes to work with difficult colors or stains and for special effects dependent on opacification, crystallization or variegation.
• Create glazes from scratch and use your own native materials in the highest possible percentage.

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

"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."

"I have to tell you that this program is really really fabulous! I thank you very much for putting it together and making it available. I had set up a little Excel program to figure the flux unity and Si:Al stuff, but it was cumbersome and lacked all the wonderful data you have put into INSIGHT."

"Though it is a complex program, it makes great sense. It is very impressive in dealing with the mechanics of calculating glaze chemistries."

"Now that I have purchased the software, I am finding all of this information and so many of my questions are being answered as I watch and digest the videos you made. Let me just say that what you have provided is amazing - and the way you provide the information is so digestible even for someone like me who has absolutely no understanding chemistry or what is involved in making glazes. I understand so much more, I can't even believe that I got a grasp of the Batch & Formula recipe sections on the videos. I will be working the lessons plans you provide too to become better at this. The software provides a lot more than meets the eye.... INSIGHT is worth every penny! "

"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. "

"I am a teacher at a university in Germany. Glazes are my love. I spend 30 years in glaze research mainly about the question how to adjust glaze-recepies to my raw materials, my clay and my kiln with the help of Insight. Now I have a very good unterstanding about handling the Seger-Formular with a special view on eutectic mixtures."