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've been following some of the APP tutorials and was getting interested. I've been using PI for a couple years and it has a great feature set but the interface is difficult. I liked the APP interface, looks a lot like Lightroom, which I use.
I downloaded the trial version this morning. I've been collecting narrowband data on NGC6995, the Eastern Veil, for the last week. A lot of it was poor, due to high humidity and hazy conditions, plus a number of frames were rotated about 10 degrees. I decided to give APP a real challenge! I loaded 149 lights, 76 flats, 100 darks and 50 biases, chose the Quality weight, and hit GO. Was fun to watch my PC chew through all that data and create and apply all the masters. Went through normalization, star analysis/alignment, and integration. The Ha and O3 masters looked nice. Did a simple HOO RGB combine and was flabbergasted at the quality out of the box. So here is my first APP image, with no real post processing except some Selective color and playing with the Preview settings. And not only did APP get good result out of a very average data set, it was fast and fun! Loved playing with the RGB combine sliders and the Selective color. Anyway here is a JPG of the Eastern Veil, ASI1600 camera on an AstroPhysics GTX130 running at f/4.5. 76 2 minute Ha subs and 73 4 minute O3 subs.
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Hi @whixson,
Thank you very much for the detailed description of your first APP image 😉
It's great to see that you were able to get such a good result while being new to APP !
Kind regards,
Mabula
