2026-10-09 APP 2.0.0-beta48 has been released !
This is mainly a bug fix release for the reported bugs in beta47. In addition it has a significant User Interface performance improvement noticable when you need to process 1000s of images in APP.
2026-10-03 APP 2.0.0-beta47 has been released !
This is a very big release... many code optimizations/rewrites, many parts of APP are much faster and more precise, especially star analysis and registration are much faster ! Big mosaics will go much faster 🙂
And we introduce a new preview filter, which includes the new Adaptive Deep Sky Stretch and a General Levels Stretch, this has been long over due. The old preview filter (the panel on the right side to stretch and preview your data) has not been updated for a couple of years and it is a critical part of any APP session.
Adaptive Deep Sky Stretch or ADSS is a much more intuitive stretch algorithm. It is also color preserving (which is a great new addition in itself ! ) which means that the highlights are no longer bleached, color is maintained from the linear data while stretching. You can simply stretch your data using the sky background level and signal width sliders which work much easier and more intuitive. You no longer need to fiddle with the old complicated sliders with zoom buttons. All the zoom buttons for the sliders are made redundant. And you can enter slider values in the slider value fields yourself. I will make a youtube video in the coming days to explain and fully introduce ADSS. Once the video is ready, it will be highlighted on the forum.
RGB Combine upgrade !. The RGB Combine Tool has been rewritten mostly. The tool is faster and easier to use and most importantly, the Luminance slider to inject a luminance channel or channels into the RGB composite is now working correctly. It no longer bleaches the RGB colors. Combined with the new ADSS preview, you will get much better and easier great composites with great color! I will also explain this in a new youtube video.
Attached is a stack of 55 images of comet C/2019 L3 ATLAS from two nights ago.
I used 1-star registration, and also local normalized rejection during integration.
Note that the faintest background stars are trailed, which makes sense because the 1-star registration data showed that the comet drifted about five pixels (in the X direction, zero rate in Y direction) during the imaging run. But the brighter stars are not trailed at all.
I presume this is a feature of local normalized rejection?...it is only invoked above a certain threshold that is defined by the local background level?
Anyway, I just wanted to share this result. (When I first looked at the image I knew something was different, but it took me a bit of time to realize the difference in bright/faint stars that did/didn't trail.)
But the brighter stars are not trailed at all.
It is difficult to see with such a strongly compressed image, but the bright stars are trailed as well. Compared to the displayed size of the stars, however, the trailing of the bright stars is much less noticeable than that of the faint stars.
