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

"Although only a part time potter, I would not be able to experiment to the same extent without Insight. It makes me admire potters of past generations who managed to develop glazes without such a tool. "

"If it were not for INSIGHT I would not be doing and teaching ceramic calculations today."

"I have recently taken up hobby pottery after a career as a lecturer and software engineer. I was looking for a disciplined way of dealing with glazes and was disappointed by the lack of explanation in glaze recipe books. I stumbled over your site which does hold out the promise of being able to develop a principled understanding of what is going on."

"I recently got LEVEL 1 and love it. Now I would like to upgrade to LEVEL 2 ..."

"I have been a user of Insight for years and would be lost without it. You have a wonderful product."

"I'm now ready to purchase level 2 of Insight. Your resources are truly amazing and as an ex electronic engineer (now a potter), I really am impressed with your analytical approaches ... Thank you for your wonderful contributions."