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 from Austria!
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I have reworked the data that was made during this year's trip to America.
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Location: Bryce Canyon (Bortle 1)
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Full quality: https://www.astrobin.com/kdaqyt/?nc=user
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This time I used APP for stacking and calibrating the pics and Starnet++ (new in the workflow) to edit the nebulae and the stars separately. The final tweaks were made in Photoshop.
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Thanks to @jw_duijndamhetnet-nl and @kijja for the technical help 🙂
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I'm looking forward to your feedback!
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CS Gernot
Tip for others; opening the image above in a new tab also gives a better resolution to view.
I think the amount of data is amazing, clearly those skies work. 🙂 If I may and hit on a few points? I notice that the nebula has some spotty pattern, could it be a bit over-stretched? This also seems to be the case looking at the background around the stars.
I know what you mean Vincent. When I remove the stars from the image with Starnet ++ you get a very noisy result. Maybe you have to smooth the starless picture ...!?
Do you have any idea how to solve the problem?
I would be interested anyway what a PRO could get out of this stack 🙂
CS Gernot
I'm no pro, but would love to give it a go. I do have extremely bad Internet where I am now, so downloading will take a while. Personally I'm a fan of not too many tricks with software, the data is what it is and if you really need to use other things to kind of "boost" a result, my take would be to just take more data. 😉 But that's personal, I'd like to see what can be done still and thanks for offering to do that.
I'm very curious what you make of my data 🙂 I understand your approach that is also good, because otherwise all pictures would look the same!
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Here is the stack:Â
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lejQi18FL-0NlBh55dOCepqeS4uF0gM4?usp=sharing
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CS GernotÂ
Thank you Gernot! I'll just start the download and see you back in a year. 😉 It's slow, but we'll see.
ps. Would it also be possible to get a masterdark, flat and bias? And then a subset of the raw light frames? With only the final integration I can't play as much.
@vincent-mod
I will send you a link in the evening!
CS GernotÂ
Yes, excellent! I actually tried myself, but gave up as I couldn't "quickly" get anywhere near your result. I don't use photoshop, so I guess there are some nice tricks done in there. 🙂
Here is the final version :
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Full quality:
https://www.astrobin.com/kdaqyt/B/
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Thank you for your honest feedback @vincent-mod . It helped a lot with the reworking of the picture.
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CS GernotÂ
Thank you 🙂
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@all
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I've made some minor changes in the colors 🙂
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https://www.astrobin.com/kdaqyt/C/?nc=user
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