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.
Open clusters may not be the sexiest of deep space objects, but this image is notable because I had given up on it a couple of months ago. The brighter stars had prominent red fringes on one side and blue on the other, and the large red stars had ugly dark red arcs, about 1/3 of the circumference and inside the envelope of the star.Â
With APP 1.060, not only was the processing much easier - load all R, G, and B frames and go - but by using the "align channels" option in Calibrate, the fringing was significantly reduced to the point where I felt I ended up with a usable image. Â
This was just over 3 hours of data taken 11/25/18 with a Skywatcher Esprit 120, an ASI1600MM Cool, a Paramount MyT mount, and Astrodon gen 2 LRGB filters. I ended up tossing the L frames because they made the red arcs worse - uneven saturation of the stars? Â
Post-processing was done in PI.
Full size image on Astrobin
Congrats Mabula on an excellent release! Â
Great image Rowland @rowland-f-archer-jr,
With APP 1.060, not only was the processing much easier - load all R, G, and B frames and go - but by using the "align channels" option in Calibrate, the fringing was significantly reduced to the point where I felt I ended up with a usable image.
Excellent, yes, the align channels function in calibration will reduce all sorts of chromatic aberration to a high degree 😉 In the console panel, you can find how much the alignment between the R,G,B is changed. I intend to include this in the metadata as well of the calibrated images.
This was just over 3 hours of data taken 11/25/18 with a Skywatcher Esprit 120, an ASI1600MM Cool, a Paramount MyT mount, and Astrodon gen 2 LRGB filters. I ended up tossing the L frames because they made the red arcs worse - uneven saturation of the stars?
If you get ugly results on the stars when you apply the L, this usually means that the star size and shape between the L data and the "other" data deviates quite a bit. A way to solve that is to not apply the L data 100% to luminance, but perhaps only 50-75%. Then the remaining luminance of 50-25% will still come from the "other" data. That will usually fix your stars and will still give you some benefit of L data with probably better SNR.
Thanks for sharing,
Mabula
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