The PDF Manual.
Modified: August 25, 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.

A desktop application for Windows, Linux, Macintosh that you download and install.

• Insight is a classic glaze chemistry calculator
  It interactively converts recipes to formulas and back. The main Insight window shows side-by-side recipes and their formulas, you can make chemistry changes to one while comparing it with the other.
• Insight is also a library and a teacher
  It puts at your fingertips a huge amount of information to help you learn the principles of glaze chemistry and it teaches you how to adjust, fix and formulate glazes.
• It is a database
  You can store all your recipes, picture, material information where you can easily find it.
• It is a problem solver
  Using our videos, instructional and reference materials and our personal help you can solve problems like crazing, leaching, crawling, pinholing, blistering, etc.

Insight was first released in 1979 and has been used world wide since. It is an excellent teaching tool for demonstrating the principles of formula/analysis/unity, limit formulas, LOI, and material-oxide relationships.

Overwhelmed by glaze chemistry? Try starting here.

What People Have Said

"I have been working with clay for 3 decades and this is the first time I feel that I have really begun to get a grip on what glaze materials do. It's one thing to read about the materials in a book but theory and reality often didn't line up for me. The best part was learning as much as we did by limiting our base glaze. So thanks for your book, Insight and Five Twenties!"

"I have to tell you that your Insight software is great! To think that I used to spend hours doing math to figure out stuff that your program takes seconds to do ... you did a great job on your program and I have not run into any problems with it. "

"I have a large experience in characterization of ceramic materials ... development of glazes and pigments (several publications in renowned magazines and encyclopedias) ... I find the website, the database and the software of Digitalfire very good and I would like to offer my help as a consultant or editor."

"I really appreciate your help, and could not live without Insight ... not to mention all the information on the Digitalfire website!!! I have been working on developing new glazes for ^04 talc bodies (considering the energy crunch), and I would never have approached this investigation had it not been for these tools. One of the best purchases that I ever made!!!"

"I am really pleased with your new software! I love Insight!! "

"I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed using your software. The more I learn the more I realize how little I know."