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.
Hello,
I have light frames of my HA-OIII colour camera and a friend of me shared his HA and OIII mono fits files.
How can I stack the HA together? I need first to extract HA-OIII, but than it will be a master light file.
Or can select in tab 0 the colour HA and load the HA-OIII in session 1 and HA mono in session 2? And stack them together?Â
Stefan (@stefanastro)
I haven't tried this (yet) but it shouldn't be too difficult.
I would start by choosing 'Ha-OIII extract Ha' on tab (0) (assuming its still called that - I'm a bit behind on APP versions).
Don't take APP to integration, just save the calibrated Ha mono files, which you can do on tab 2 or 4. Ideally your friend's files would already be calibrated, otherwise you will need to separately calibrate and save his files (unless you decide to use his data uncalibrated - not ideal but it can work).
Then clear APP and load both sets of data with no calibration files and you should be able to create a combined Ha integration. Depending on which version of APP you are using you might have to uncheck 'same camera and optics' for registration - but I gather the latest APP version does not require this. I would recommend 'local normalization correction' but you might need to experiment with this.
Then you would repeat all this with your OIII and your friend's OIII (I'm assuming you want to use his OIII as well).
This will leave you with a combined Ha integration and a combined OIII integration. Just load these as lights (no calibration), run register, save the registered frames, and you should be ready to do Combine RGB or whatever you like for normal processing of NB mono files.
The only difficulty I can see is you might have to play around with registration options if his pixel scale is very different to yours, or if the star counts are too low.
JC
