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

"Excellent software! Normally I'd just fire up the debugger and crack something like this, but I was so impressed by what your doing, I'll buy a piece of software for the second time in my life (first was a copy of MS Quick C)."

"I am getting better at using Insight for what it is intended in the ability to select different materials to provide the various oxides and to compare them to target glazes. I have also used Insight to review recipes to decide whether I want to try them or not, given the likely characteristics and avoided wasting my time with poorly constructed recipes."

"Just wanted to drop you a note to let you know that 2006-20 now works fine under Gentoo Linux 64-bit version! Thanks!!! I can quit running the windows version under WINE now.!!!"

"I love the program and now have a ton of glazes to test."

"I have changed my computer for a new one which runs XP ... Can you help me? I have been using this program for years and would be really sad to loose it."

"I have looked at your website for years but only now after running our company for 15 years am I frustrated enough to spend the time needed to LEARN more about glazes. Some of my glazes are metal marking."


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