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.
I ran an integration on C/2017 K2 yesterday and the result was not what I expected. Sort of the obverse of deep sky stacker's "register stars and register comet" mode, APP produced L, R, G, and B integrations with both the stars and the comet trailed!
I am reasonably sure that this is due to how I interleaved the exposures. Not wanting to end up with big time offsets between the various channels, I had it swap filters with every sub, so the data comprised endless repeats of LRLGLB. When APP prompted me about using timestamp metadata, I clicked "Yes", so the file list window sorted by time, interleaving the channels exactly as shot. I had to click on just about every frame to register the comet -- no big whoop, really. But when I was done I had four streaky integrations.
I tried again, unchecking everything but 14 of the luminance frames, and the comet looks just fine. For that I wound up having to click on about every other frame to register (I clicked "Yes" for "use metadata timestamp" again).
I'm not complaining, or even sure that this is a bug -- it might just be that using timestamp metadata is the wrong choice for this situation. It is, I suppose, somewhat less convenient to select the frames and do the registration four times instead of one. This is more of a "Hmm, interesting behavior" sort of message.
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BTW I ran it again, loading only one channel. With timestamp metadata on, I get streaks, without, I get a comet. This is with 2.0.0-beta2.
Hi Rick @rickwayne,
Thank you very much for reporting this behaviour 😉
It sounds like APP is having difficulties on your comet data to detect the comet properly... probably best if i can have a look at your dataset to see what happens exactly and why... and then properly fix it if needed 😉
Can you upload the dataset here?
https://upload.astropixelprocessor.com/
username: upload
password: upload
Please make a folder like RickWayne-Comet-issue and let me know once uploaded 😉
Mabula
OK, done. RickWayneStreakyComet.
Thanks!
